


Chasing the Sun

by engmaresh



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Ladyhawke Fusion, Angst, Animal Abuse, Brother-Sister Relationships, Canon-Typical Offensive Language, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language, Homophobia, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2018-12-12 22:22:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11746374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/engmaresh/pseuds/engmaresh
Summary: When Ian and Mickey disappear after Mickey's wedding, Mandy's the only one who seems to care about finding them. And when she does, she soon learns that there's now more to Ian and Mickey than meets the eye. That, and that their time is quickly running out.





	1. you’re calling about ian?

**Author's Note:**

> Gallavich Ladyhawke AU!
> 
> For those not familiar with Ladyhawke, it's an 80s movie starring Michelle Pfeifer and Rutger Hauer as star-crossed lovers and _SPOILERS_ (if you're fine with spoilers, the link to the wiki entry is [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladyhawke_\(film\)), and the TV Tropes page is [here](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/Ladyhawke)). It's a really good movie, though with some odd soundtrack choices.

 

Mandy’s taking a quick smoke break out the back of Waffle Cottage, swiping through her Facebook dashboard as she takes a drag of her cigarette and blows the smoke out into the cold, crisp air. There’s not really much to see. She doesn’t have many friends, and most of them are pregnant, busy with their shitty babies and boyfriends or husbands. She almost declines the call when it pops up, an ingrained reaction to all unrecognized numbers, but she catches herself this time. The last time she’d accidentally done that, no one had picked up no matter how many times she’d tried to call back.

“Hey?” she says carefully down the line. Knowing her luck, it’ll be some pervert jerking off to the sound of her breathing. She’d gotten three of those last week.

“This Michelle?”

“Uh, um yeah,” says Mandy, caught off guard by the fake name she’d put on the posters. She mashes out her unfinished cigarette against the wall, drops it to the ground. “That’s me. You’re calling about Ian?”

“Who are you?” says the caller, and now that he’s got all her attention, she notices he sounds old. Not old man, grandpa old, but she’s definitely not pegging him for anyone under thirty. His tone too. Just two lines, and she can tell he’s sure as hell not South Side.

“I’m a friend,” she says.

“He’s missing?”

The more questions this guy asks, the more Mandy’s certain he actually knows where Ian is. She’s familiar with that caginess, wanting to help someone, but also not wanting to rat them out.

“Yeah,” she says, figuring that giving this guy a bit more information will be more likely to open him up. “Three months. Look, he’s not in any trouble. I just want to know if he’s okay. And where I can find him.”

The guy sighs.

“I’m not looking for the reward.”

“Huh?”

“The reward,” the guy repeats, and there’s kinda an amused lilt to his tone, like he knows full well Mandy doesn’t have the five-hundred dollar reward she’d promised in the flier and plans to stiff whoever gives her information.

“Okay. So tell me where Ian is. Please,” she adds though the word is unfamiliar on her tongue, just in case manners happen to soften that North Side ass up.

“I don’t know him as Ian,” says the man, and there’s something about the way he says the name that makes Mandy pretty sure he knows Ian in more than passing, “but you can find him at the Fairy Tail most nights.”

“Where’s that?”

“That’s all I can tell you,” says her mystery caller, and she can hear other voices growing louder in the background of his call. “Don’t tell him I told you.”

“Wait–” Mandy yells, but the call ends with a beep. She stares down at the **Call Ended** on her screen, before fumbling another cigarette out of her pack.

The door slams open, and she flinches, dropping the cigarette. “What the fuck, Jaya?”

“Fuck _you_ ,” Jaya retorts, snapping her apron at Mandy. “You said smoke break! What kinda smoke break takes so damn long? You offering some other services back here?” She glances round the empty back lot like some john or druggie is about the crawl out of the dumpster.

“Jesus fuck, calm your tits,” Mandy mutters, jamming her phone into her apron pocket and storming back into the diner, snatching up a pot of coffee as she goes.

She’s snappy the rest of the night, does poorly in tips due to her attitude and it’s a relief when she can finally lock herself in her room, toss aside that goddamn squirrel hat and roll off her tights. She sticks her dying phone into its charger and hunches over her screen as she wills the last of her data to pull through and show her what and where exactly the ‘Fairy Tale’.

The results make her smack her phone against her head. “Jesus. Ian.”

Okay, dancing at a gay club isn’t quite something she’d put past Ian. She knows he takes great pride in his appearance, and he can dance a lot better than most guys, but if Ian’s at a gay club then Mickey... Mickey can’t be all that far behind.

When she’d printed up the missing posters for Ian, she hadn’t made any mention of Mickey. As far as all of South Side knows, Mickey’s upped and gone, and good riddance to him. Not that anyone cares about Ian’s whereabouts either, except Mandy and only some of the Gallaghers apparently. Among the Milkovichs’ she seems to be the only one to remember Mickey’s gone too. Oh, Terry had lost his shit when his newly married youngest son disappeared the day after his wedding, and Mandy and Iggy made sure they both stayed away from the house for a few days after that. But then things had settled down and gone back to normal.

Normal for everyone but Mandy.

Because she’s apparently been blind to an entire fucking year of her fake boyfriend fucking her brother. Jesus. Sometimes she still can’t believe how absolutely stupid she must have been to have missed that, especially since Ian had actually _talked_ to her about his secret, on-the-down-low closeted boyfriend. She wondered if he’d told Mickey about that, and if they’d laughed at her behind her back. When she finds him, the first thing she’ll do is punch Ian in the face.

And then she’ll punch Mickey, if he’s with Ian. Now that she’s finally put two and two together, it makes sense that they’d both disappeared at the same time, and right after Mickey’s wedding too. Maybe Ian had managed to talk Mickey into leaving with. It surprises her. She’d never thought Mickey to be the kind to run off with anyone. Then again, she’d never expected him to be gay either. That hurts too, unexpectedly, her brother’s secrecy. They haven’t been particularly close in a long time, but she still knows (and likes) him better than any of her other brothers due their closeness in age, and well, Mickey _had_ to have known she’s okay with Ian being gay. And yet he’d felt the need to keep all that from her, and screw her boyfriend on top of that.

So if Mickey ran off with Ian, chances are, they might still be together. If she finds Ian, she finds Mickey. She has no illusions that she’ll be able to persuade either of them to come back–hell if they’re out of the South Side, maybe they can take her with them–but she’ll hopefully rest a little better knowing that Terry hasn’t killed them and dumped them in a ditch somewhere.

It’s set. She’s going to the Fairy Tale tomorrow night.

 

* * *

 

Mandy only manages to go to the Fairy Tale two nights after receiving the mystery call. She’d been unable to find a replacement for her shifts, and at the moment, gainful employment and the paycheck that comes with it takes precedence over the whereabouts of Ian Gallagher.

Now that she’s finally got a night off, she silently curses Ian as she stands across the road from the gay club, her breath misting in the air. She’s never walked down a street and been ignored by more than half the men passing. While it’s a relief to be free of catcalls and whistles, what if they won’t let her in? Mandy’s never been to a gay bar before; do they card for dick too?

There’s a line, but it’s short and Mandy cuts past them to bouncer. “Hey,” she says, looking up at him from beneath her eyelashes until she realizes it might not actually work on him. Shit. But that’s what money’s for.

“Wrong club, girlie,” one of the queens behind her mutters. “No faghags,” his partner murmurs in agreement.

There’s a “fuck off” at the tip of her tongue, but she doesn’t want to get on the bouncer’s bad side, so she swallows it, turns and gives them the finger instead. She slips the bouncer a fifty, and for a long moment it looks like he’s still about to turn her away. Then the fifty goes into his pocket, and he waves her through.

The testosterone hits her like a wave as she walks into the club. She has grown up in a household full of smelly, masculinity-obsessed men, but she’s never experienced anything like this. A soup of male sweat, male cologne and probably a bunch of other bodily fluids too. She pushes her way to the closest bar, and manages to wrestle a spot near the tap. Two guys in sparkly tops and heavily lined eyes flit between the men crowded around the bar, serving up ridiculous drinks and flirtations.

How’s she going to find Ian in all of this? The bartenders ignore her, saving their attentions and drinks for their handsy paying customers until she grabs one of them by the strap of his sparkly tank. He swats her hand away and scowls, but at least she’s got his attention.

“Is Ian here?” She has to shout to be heard above the pounding music.

“Who?” he yells back?

Right, her mystery caller had mentioned he didn’t know Ian as Ian. She grabs a photo out of her jacket pocket. It’s a picture of Ian flipping off at the camera, with a red beanie she'd never seen him wear on his head. She’d found it tucked away between the pages of one of the many gun magazines piled next to the toilet, and she’s pretty sure it’s what Mickey jerked off to. It’s fucking gross, but at this point she doesn’t care. That said, Ian and Mickey can be pretty damn sure she’ll be collecting for all her trouble once she’s made sure they’re still alive and breathing.

The bartender stares at a picture for a long moment. Beneath the sparkly eyeliner, Mandy notices his pupils are blown. Jesus, what help can this guy be if he’s high? She pulls back her arm, determined to trawl the club till she finds Ian when there’s a spark of recognition in the bartender’s eyes. “Red!” he says, gesturing to his hair.

Mandy rolls her eyes. Whatever he’s on, it’d better be worth the brain rot. “Yes, red.”

“Curtis!” the guy says, throws a thumb over his shoulder. Then he turns away and goes back to fixing drinks for his eager customers.

Mandy looks at the direction he’d pointed to. He’d just pointed into the club. But at least she has a name now, and the confirmation that Ian is here. She moves away from the bar, and it gets a little less crowded the deeper in she goes. There are men everywhere, of all ages, kissing and drinking and dancing and tucking bills into the tiny gold shorts of the dancers. She looks up the frankly impressive package of one such dancer–and she’s apparently not the only one appreciating him judging by the number of bills tucked into his shorts–only to find that, holy shit, she’s staring at Ian.

He doesn’t notice her, gyrating his hips to the beat of the music upon his raised platform. There’s a strange look in his eyes, both focused and vacant all at once, like he’s away in some place inside his head, not all here. He’s probably high, just like the bartenders, just like almost everyone in this place except Mandy, who wishes she could be a little less sober right now.

“Ian!” she yells, but he continues his dance, staring over the top of her head at some other part of the room. She follows his gaze to some overweight balding man eye-fucking Ian over his fruity cocktail. Jesus. But it’s always the ugly ones who are the most generous with their money. Overcompensation, or some shit like that.

“Ian!” she tries again. “Curtis!”

Ian finally looks down and his mouth forms an “O” as his eyes widen in recognition. “Mandy!” He casts a quick glance around the room, then hops off his platform and gives her a hug. Sticky and reeking of sweat and alcohol, he’s close enough now that she can see his eyes are blown too. She hugs him back anyway. All things aside, Mandy has missed her best friend.

“What are you doing here?” Ian asks her, eyes continuing to dart around the club. Mandy tries to look around to see who or what he’s looking for but there’s no one that stands out to her.

“Looking for you, you ass!” she says, punching him in the shoulder. “You fucking disappeared!”

Finally, he seems to focus on her, if only for a little while.

“Had to get out,” he mutters, barely audible over the music. “Had to get away.”

“Is Mickey with you?”

“Mickey?” Ian repeats, face lighting up as he once again scans the room like Mickey’s about to materialize under the strobe lights. Mandy hopes to Jesus her brother isn’t here dancing too. No alcohol in the world will be able to erase the sight of Mickey Milkovich in booty shorts. Just the thought of it makes her want to gag.

“Is he here?” she asks again.

He shakes his head, droplets of sweat spattering over her face. “Nah,” he says, as she grimaces and wipes them away with her sleeve. “Waiting for me. Look,” he adds, grabbing her arm. “My shift ends soon. Wait for me.”

Before Mandy can even respond, he’s turned and hopped back onto the stage, starting up his dancing and probably resuming his eye-fucking with the geezer in the corner. Mandy considers her options. She could wait for Ian like some fucking patsy, and finally get some answers. Or she could go, knowing that he’s still alive at least, that Mickey is too.

She waits. She waits, because apparently when it comes to the Gallaghers, the Milkovich’s are weak as fuck. Bad enough she wasted enough hours of her life on Lip’s ungrateful ass, now she’s going to do the same for Ian. If that’s a pattern, she’d better stay the fuck away from the younger boys too.

“Soon” ends up being three hours. She gets a drink then another and another at the bar, each of them overpriced and fruity and ridiculous. None of them get her as drunk as she wants to be. She should have asked Ian share some of his molly or whatever he was on with her.

It’s close to two am, according to her phone, and she’s contemplating leaving. Ian seems to be doing fine for himself, and he doesn’t seem to mind being groped by horny old men. She still doesn’t know what Mickey’s up to, but she knows her brother can take care of himself. Maybe he’s being Ian’s kept man. Fuck, maybe they aren’t even together.

A tap on her shoulder makes her startle, and she almost falls off her bar stool. It’s Ian. Whatever shitty eyeliner he’s been using has smeared over the course of the night, making his eyes look hollow in the stark, strobing lights of the club. He jerks his head, urging her to follow him, and they wind their way past moving bodies to the back to the club. “Your girlfriend, Curtis?” someone yells, and Ian wordlessly flips them off over his back.

In a cramped locker room that smells even worse than the club, Ian strips off his shorts without compunction. Crumpled, damp bills fall to the floor, among them several Benjamins. Holy shit, Mandy thinks. Maybe she should shack up with Ian too.

Ian pulls on some jeans and a sweatshirt, spends several seconds chasing some errant bills around the floor and stuffing them in his pockets before grabbing his parka. “C’mon,” he says, and he leads her out, not through the club, but through a long, dimly lit corridor with a whole bunch of doors leading off from it. He stops at one and puts a finger to his lips. “Shhh,” he says, and a smirk plays about his lips.

Slowly turning the handle, he crouches and as the door swings open, something small and solid hurtles forward and smacks into his knees. For one weird crazy second, Mandy thinks it’s a child, but it’s got four legs, snuffles at Ian’s ankles and makes a happy kind of yelping sound as he ruffles its ears. It’s a fucking dog.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Ian whispers, and the dog’s happy whines turn into a growl at it smells and sees Mandy standing behind him.

“It’s Mandy,” Ian continues, letting the dog snuffle all over his hand. “You know Mandy. And c’mon, we gotta go.”

He opens the door a bit wider and the dog slips out and makes a dash for the door at the end of the corridor.

“He can’t wait to get out of here,” Ian mutters to her lengthening his pace. Mandy has to jog to keep up. “He hates this place.”

The door opens up into an alley, and Ian’s dog immediately runs off behind a dumpster. Ian pulls out a pack of cigarettes, offering one to Mandy and lighting it up before taking one for himself.

Mandy sucks in a deep lungful of nicotine. “You have a dog? You dress him up in sweaters too?”

Ian laughs. “You sound like Mickey. Isn’t he great?”

Mandy isn’t sure if he means the dog or her asshole brother. She hopes it’s the dog. “I guess,” she says. She doesn’t like dogs, not after being bitten by one she’d been goaded into hitting by Mickey, back when they’d still been kinds. After that the fucker’d told her she had rabies and only had three days to live.

The dog comes trotting back, and she reaches down to pet it but it shakes her hand off and wanders off to sniff at the wall instead. Doesn’t like her, go figure.

“What’s his name?”

“Mi–” Ian begins, then breaks off into a stutter. “Uh, um.”

“Mickey, huh?” Mandy asks, and the sheepish look on Ian’s face confirms her lazy guess, before he hides it through a cloud of smoke. “Jesus, you guys get married too? That’s bigamy for Mickey, y’know.”

“It looks like him though, doesn’t it?”

Mandy looks at the dog, which looks like some kind of mongrel pitbull. It gives her a baleful look as it pisses up against the wall. She supposes that with its downturned mouth, pale blue eyes and general grumpy old-man face, it does resemble her brother quite a bit.

“Seriously though, ‘Mickey’? And my brother didn’t beat you up for that?”

Ian shrugs, neither confirming nor denying. “It’s Mick.”

“Ye-ah,” says Mandy, “like that’s a huge difference.” She imagines Ian calling, both her brother and the dog running at the name. She snorts.

“So you said Mickey’s waiting. Where is he?”

Ian scratches his head. Now that he’s out in the crisp air and coming down from his high, bathed in the stark light of the streetlamp, he looks far less self-assured and calm than he’d seemed in the club. He looks tired and uncertain, and the dog–Mandy can’t think of it as Mickey–seems to sense it, and returns from its enthusiastic investigation of a bin to nudge its nose against Ian’s shin.

“At-at home,” says Ian, and he bends over to pet the mutt. A thoughtless gesture or trying to avoid her eyes? Despite being perfectly happy to act as an agony aunt and sounding board for her problems, Ian had never quite opened up about his to Mandy. Hell, he’d gone on and on for years about his ‘secret boyfriend’, and she’d had to find out that this secret boyfriend was her goddamn brother at said brother’s damn wedding.

“I get to see him?”

Ian straightens, and now he looks angry. “Jesus, Mandy, why do you care? We’ve been gone for almost four months and no one’s come looking. Why bother now?” His eyes narrow. “How did you find me anyway?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Mandy snaps. “And you know what, fuck it. You guys got out, and if you want to play house together or whatever, _fine_. But I’ve been looking for you for a month, and I’ve all kinds of perverts calling me while I’m trying to find your ass, so thanks for nothing, I guess. Then I come here, wait for you for fucking hours, and then you introduce me to your _dog_?” She kicks a chunk of snow at the animal, and it backs away, growling. “So sue me for fucking caring!”

For a long moment, Ian just stares at her, hands in the pocket of his parka. Mandy’s beginning to think he’d spaced out and ignored her entire rant, then that damn dog comes over again and Ian crouches down to pet it.

“Stop fucking playing with your dog and look at me, Ian!”

“Go home, Mandy.” Ian’s voice is so low, she can barely hear it. He’s still crouched down, fondling the dog’s floppy ears.

“What?”

“Go home! Here,” he rises to his feet and jams his hands in his pocket, pulling out a fistful of bills. “Take this. For your time and work and shit.”

“Don’t fucking pay me to go,” Mandy snarls.

“Just. Fucking. Take it,” he snaps, grabbing Mandy’s wrist and trying to curl her hand around the notes.

“Let me go!” She knees Ian in the crotch, missing his balls, but it is enough to wind him, and he falls back on his ass to the cold pavement. His stupid fucking dog darts forward, growling and snapping its jaws at her ankles, but not coming close enough to bite. Mandy skitters back, grabbing a hunk of dirty snow and throwing it at the animal to keep it away. It barks once, sudden and sharp in the almost empty street, but seems reluctant to leave Ian’s side.

“Fuck you, Ian Gallagher!” She kicks one of the fallen notes, spattering him with sludge. “Fuck you, fuck your dog, and tell Mickey fuck him too.”

She turns on her heel and walks away. Her eyes feel hot as tears prickle in the corners, and she swipes angrily at them. Behind her, she can hear Ian get to his feet. She doesn’t bother looking back. Ian and Mickey, they can go to hell for all she cares.

 


	2. that short, angry closet-case

It’s back to work the next day. Mandy crawls out of bed still half asleep, and drags on her uniform. The squirrel wobbles precariously on her head as she slouches into the kitchen where her father and brother are already eating, and Svetlana is busy at the stove.

Mandy has no idea how to feel about the Russian’s presence in her house, especially now that she kinda sorta suspects how her presence came to be. At first she’d thought Svetlana had just been some hooker Mickey’d knocked up, but with the knowledge she now has about his sexuality, things have become less clear. But she’s here, quiet, observant and helpful to some extent, considering that Mandy hadn’t been turfed out of bed an hour ago to make breakfast for the men.

She grabs some coffee from the pot, dumps some of Svetlana’s scrambled eggs onto a piece of toast and stuffs the messy sandwich into her mouth. It’s then that she catches sight of faint bruise high on Svetlana’s cheek. Mandy knows how to spot when a bruise has been hidden by makeup. She’s spent plenty of time front of a mirror, carefully layering foundation over a bruise or trying to get a cut to stop bleeding so she can brush concealer over it. She feels an unexpected surge of sympathy for the other woman. Though Mickey was an asshole and an idiot, marrying him had been a step up for Svetlana, a pregnant whore with no papers. Now she’s tied to the Milkovich household but unexpectedly without her husband, stuck with Terry like the rest of them. Mandy pretty sure her father is banging his daughter-in-law, and just the thought of that makes her skin crawl and her thoughts desperately seek something else to fix upon.

Ian. Ian, stupid fucking Ian. Ian, who’d paid for the–never mind, don’t go there, Ian who tried to pay her to go away. Why? Luckily enough, that question takes up her thoughts all the way out the house and onto the El and to work. She’s not sure why it disturbs her so. It’s not like she hadn’t thought about, hell she’d been tallying it all up in her, planning for that pound of flesh she’d extract from them for her troubles but the way Ian had just...told her to go. Accused her of not caring. Tried to force the money into her hands.

“Hey, you–hey, HEY!” 

Mandy startles, and jolts back to the present with the horrified realization that the coffee she’s been pouring has overflowed its mug and is starting to drip down her customer’s lap. The man has shrunk back in his seat as he tries to move his crotch away from the hot liquid. 

“Are you fucking blind, bitch?” he yells, and Mandy, trying hard to repress a flinch, grabs a handful of napkins and dumps them onto the brown puddle on the table.

“I’m so sorry, sir,” she mumbles.

“You’d better be,” he grumbles. “I want to speak to your manager.”

Her manager, Aaron (the Asswipe) isn’t happy about being hauled out of his back office, and is even unhappier when the customer refuses any form of compensation for Mandy’s mistake. She already knows what’s coming before he even has to say anything.

“I’m fired.”

He shrugs, as though to say,  _ What can I do? _

Mandy snorts, taking off her squirrel cap and tossing it on the table. Aaron isn’t the worst guy she’s worked for, but the dude’s as spineless as a jellyfish. There was no way he was going to stand up for her, and she’d been screwed the second she’d drifted off with a pot of coffee in hand.

He’s still spinelessly licking the customer’s ass when she stomps out with all her belongings from her locker and pulls him aside. “I want what I’m owed for today by the end of this week,” she hisses. Aaron looks at her with his almost colorless eyes and shrugs. She’s pretty sure his mom dropped him on his head as a child. Repeatedly. 

Well, looks like she’s got the rest of the day off. Peachy. She doesn’t want to go home yet. At the moment, she and Svetlana are pulling most the weight, financially, in the Milkovich household. And with Terry back, she can’t just crash at home and take a few days off before job-hunting again. Better start now, and if she’s lucky she’ll have a new job by the end of the week and Terry won’t even know the difference.

She gets on the El–and great, now that she’s been fired, half her monthly pass has gone to waste–and instead of going home, finds herself getting off at Belmont. Fucking Ian, she thinks again as she lets herself get bumped along by a group of tourists. Like she hasn’t got better things to do than to haunt the Fairy Tail looking for his ass. It’s not like they’ll have a job for her there, seeing that she’s lacking the necessary parts. She wants to leave, but doesn’t want to waste the trip up. There’s still something about Ian’s behavior from last night, and there’s a part of Mandy–the part that had crushed madly on him on those years ago, that hadn’t let go of him despite their incompatible orientations, the part that has turned over the years, to something more platonic and deep–that just wouldn’t let go of that. Ian’s a hard guy to let go off. And Mandy, despite knowing the many ways curiosity can kill a cat, just wants to know.

Sometimes she almost regrets deciding to chase after him and make him her boyfriend. Somehow life had been simpler before she’d started running after Gallaghers. Emptier maybe, lonelier, less bright, but easier. Mickey’d been right when he’d once told her you can’t lose what you’ve never had, but Mickey’s gonna have to eat his own words anyway, since he’s apparently decided he needed to have Ian and couldn’t bear to lose him either.

The Fairy Tail looks nondescript and slightly dingy in the stark winter daylight. Pedestrians walk past, headed for the open, more colorful cafes and shops. Much to her surprise, she’s able to stroll right in. She’d expected a locked door at the very least. But she finds herself walking down into the club, the only people around being the cleaning crew, and a harried looking man with a clipboard.

She has to plant herself in front of his path in order for him to notice her, and he gives a condescending even Lip would be proud of.

“What is it?” he snaps, like he can’t wait to shake her off his shoe and leave.

“I need to talk to you about Curtis.”

“Curtis?”

“Dancer, red-head, about six feet.” She raises her hand about a foot over her head.

The man snorts. “Shoulda started with redhead. Ask Jason over there, he’s in charge of the dancers.”

Jason-over-there end up being over at the back, in an office where the most dominating feature is a back leather sofa. Mandy briefly wonders if it serves the same purpose it does in casting agencies and pornos, before forcing her mind back to the matter at hand. “Hey,” she says, without bothering to introduce herself, “you know Curtis? Redhead, tall? I need to know if you’ve got his address.”

Jason briefly looks up from his laptop to smirk at her. It’s a slimy, condescending smirk Mandy finds herself desperately wanting to punch off his face. “Why? You the angry ex-girlfriend?”

Mandy rolls her eyes. Though admittedly it’s kinda true. She weighs her options before deciding for something that’s kind of a little true. “Nah, I’m looking for my brother, and they’re screwing so…”

“Wait,” says Jason, actually taking his eyes off the screen for longer than a second, “so your brother’s that short, angry closet-case who came in and beat up Tom for making a move on Curtis?”

Well, Mandy thinks, that describes Mickey pretty accurately. She just shrugs though.

Jason laughs. “And now you’re looking for him. What did he do, leave his wife and kids for Curtis?” He laughs even harder, to the point where it starts to get weird. Mandy’s about to consider leaving, just in case he starts climbing the wall or some shit, when he suddenly sobers, the abrupt transition even weirder than his strange laughter.

“We don’t have his address because, y’know.” He gestures dismissively, which Mandy takes to mean  _ because he’s underage and dancing illegally at a gay strip club _ . 

She resists the urge to tear at her hair. “Well fucking brilliant.”

Apparently whatever amusement or interest Jason’s had in her story has faded, since he turns back to his computer and points over her shoulder. “Door’s that way. And if you find your brother, tell him he’s banned.”

“Like Mickey’ll ever be flaming enough for this shithole anyway,” Mandy mutters as she stalks out of his creepy office.

The bar’s still closed, so she cannot even get a drink before she leaves. Though when she remembers how shit and expensive they are, she discards that idea pretty quick. She’s halfway up the stairs when a hand snags her elbow.

“What the fuck,” she snaps, jerking her hand away and raising her knee for a hit to the groin. 

“Wait, wait, wait,” says the guy, hurriedly backing away and almost falling down the stairs. A quick grab for the handrail saves him. “I know Curtis. Ian. Curtis.”

She lowers her knee.

“I overheard you talking to Mike.”

“Right.”

“You’re his sister?” His eyes are narrowed suspiciously. Of course she and Ian look nothing alike.

“Step-sister,” she lies. 

“Right,” says the guy. He’s tall, taller than Ian, with long blond hair, and looks around Mickey’s age. He looks like he should be surfing on some California coast instead of being here in cold, grey Chicago.

“So, what do you have for me?” asks Mandy, crossing her arms.

“Well,” he says, “I don’t know where exactly he lives, but we shared a cab once and he had it drop him off at an intersection at Dearborn. Said he has an apartment nearby.” He gives her the street names.

“Thanks,” Mandy says, and makes to leave, but he grabs her by the elbow again.

“Be careful,” he warns her, sounding way too nice and sincere for this place. “His boyfriend’s a violent jerk.”

Now it’s Mandy’s turn to laugh. “I know,” she says, “he’s my brother.” She leaves him–she’s pretty sure that Tom–puzzling over whatever weird incestuous relationship he now thinks Ian has going. Now she has a place.  
  


* * *

 

There are several apartment blocks near the intersection Tom had named, so it turns out that his directions aren’t that helpful after all. Two of them she strikes off her mental list because they don’t look like the kind of places Ian and Mickey could afford, even though they’re not much better looking than the rest. That leaves her with two others, and she really doesn’t want to go ringing every doorbell in each of them. 

Much to her luck however, there’s a park nearby, and one of the benches affords her a good view of both blocks. It also happens to be on the direct route to the closest El station. It’s not the best weather to be sitting outside on a park bench, so she gets herself a coffee and a new pack of smokes and settles in for the wait. At this point, she has to admit to herself, it’s less about looking for Ian and more about avoiding going home to the reality of being jobless and stuck with her shitty family.

She’s watching a flock of pigeons peck around on the hard ground when they suddenly scatter as a large white shape lands between them. The seagull squawks as they flap wildly, the air filling with the rushing sound of their beating wings. It darts after one pigeon, nipping playfully at its tail, but doesn’t bother continuing the chase.

Instead it waddles towards Mandy, head cocked. She spreads out her arms, holding only the coffee cup and the cigarette, down almost to the filter. She stubs it out on the bench, then tosses it at the gull. “Here, fuck off.”

It investigates the butt for a moment, then turns back to Mandy, peering at her with yellow-green eyes over its very orange beak.

Mandy’s wondering if she’s about to star in her own version of  _ The Birds _ and if she should start running when a hand comes down heavily on her shoulder. She leaps to her feet, yelling and dropping her coffee. The cover comes off and it splashes all over her shoes.

“Mandy!” her attacker says, and  _ she knows that voice _ .

“You fuck!” she yells, lashing out with her fist. It catches her brother in the shoulder before he can dodge away. “You fucking jerk, Mickey.”

He sidesteps her second punch, but doesn’t move away when she starts pummeling his chest. At this point she’s more shocked than angry, and she tries to blink away the tears prickling at the corner of her eyes.

“You fucking prick!” she yells one last time, before throwing her arms around her brother and hugging him. He freezes up for a second, like he always does, before his arms go around her. His hugs are always quick and perfunctory, though his time he holds on a little longer before he starts to wriggle free.

“Jesus fuck, Mickey!” She swipes angrily at her tears, watching him stand across from her, shoulders hunched, hands stuffed in the pockets of his parka. “What the hell?”

“What are you doing here?”

“What am I doing here?” she repeats, and the anger is back. “Looking for Ian. Looking for  _ you _ , you goddamn asshole.”

He has the grace to look somewhat ashamed, though he covers it quickly by pulling out a pack of smokes and tapping one out. He offers her one too, and lights them both up.

Mandy takes a long drag of her cigarette. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the seagull’s still around, pecking at something under a bush. Since it’s no longer staring at her like it wants to peck out her eyes, she ignores it and crosses her arms. Now that her search has paid off, she’s collecting all the answers she wants. “Seeing that this is Ian’s address, I’m guessing you guys are living together? How romantic.”

“Fuck off,” Mickey mutters, looking at anywhere but her. A blush slowly makes its way up his neck.

Well, he’ll be happy to know Mandy doesn’t have much patience for whatever sappy shit he’s got going with Ian. She punches him in the arm, and he jerks away. “What the fuck?”

“You left! Just...disappeared.” She kicks at his shin, he backs away. “You couldn’t even have texted? Bye Mandy, running off with your boyfriend, have a good fucking life.”

“Ain't your boyfriend anymore,” he mutters, retreating to what he seems to think is a safe distance away from her. He sucks angrily on his cigarette, blowing the smoke out his nose. It wreathes around his face, smudging the severe downturn of his mouth and the angle of his brows. “Since when do you care?”

“I’m your sister!”

He snorts, raises his eyebrows disbelievingly.  Maybe a few years ago, her words would have meant something. But they’ve drifted. Oh, she knows Mickey cares alright, in his own rough, assholish way, but they’re both shit at showing it, and at some point, it had apparently not been enough.

Mandy kicks at her fallen coffee cup, sending it rattling over to the gull. It takes to the air with a squawk, and she notices Mickey’s eyes dart after it. “I’ve been worried about you, asshole. Thought Terry had you killed and dumped in a ditch.”

A shadow crosses Mickey’s face. He stays quiet.

“So,” Mandy flicks away her cigarette and stuffs her chilled hands in her pockets. “Where’s Ian?”

Mickey shrugs. He’s digging around in his pockets for something. “Don’t know. Ain't his keeper.”

“Yeah,” says Mandy sarcastically. “Just his boyfriend.”

He hasn’t given her a titty twister in years, so she’s not prepared to dodge him, but the padding of her jacket means he can’t get a grip. It doesn’t stop him from trying though, and they end up horsing around until her knee gets too close to his balls and his grip on her hair is just shy of too painful, and they break apart, breathing hard, their breath misting the air between them.

“It’s good to see you again, assface.”

Chatty as always, Mickey just says: “Yeah.” He finally finds what he’s been looking for in his pocket, a rather generous spliff.

Mandy smiles the hardest she’s had in ages. “Sweet. You’re sharing.”

“‘Course I am,” he mutters past it, lighting it up. “M’not a barbarian.”

She has to laugh at that. They end up sitting on the bench, passing the joint between them in comfortable silence. 

“How’s married life?” she finally asks, once the joint is again safely in her hands. It’s not very good weed, though it’s enough to warm her up from the inside. 

“Ain't married,” Mickey mumbles, motioning for his turn. It doesn’t seem to have much effect on him either, judging from the way his brows still knit.

“Looked like marriage to me, bro. Tux, white dress, whole nine yards.”

Mickey leans over and snatches the joint from her fingers, taking a deep drag before he answers. “That whore can get fucked. Don’t even know if the baby’s mine.”

She knows she shouldn’t prod but she does anyway. “Then why did you marry her?”

“It’s not like it was my fuckin’ choice, okay!”

He’s breathing hard, hunched in on himself. The joint glows between his fingers. His other hand is clenched into a first, the tattoos on his knuckles faded from age and use. She remembers Mickey coming home at fourteen, hands reddened and sore. The Milkovich male rite of passage, and he’d passed. It’s been years, but she still remembers the proud grin on her brother’s face every time he curled his hands into fist and looked down at the FUCK U-UP scrawled across them. At thirteen, Mandy had already grown out of whatever hero worship she’d once had for her older brothers, and she’d personally found the tats ridiculous. When she’d told Mickey how dumb she thought they were, he’d punched her in the stomach, immediately regretting that decision when it had aggravated his tender hands. She’d seen him swallow down that pain, like he’d swallowed down so many other things, because Terry had been there, there with a pat on the back, a can of beer and his congratulations for Mickey’s affirmation of masculinity and Milkovich-ness. It’s probably the only sincere thing her father has ever said to him.

But Mickey isn’t the only one Terry’s hurt, and Mickey isn’t the one who’s still stuck in that hellhole.

“You’re not the only one who wants to get out.”

“Then leave,” Mickey says curtly. “You still with that shithead, Kenny...Ken-whatever?”

He hands her back the joint. There’s less than an inch of it left, and it’s gonna be hers.

“Nah,” she says. “Dumped his ass ages ago.” It’s a waste of a good joint, really. They’re both far too keyed-up and angry for its effects to do them any good. “And getting out…’s’not that fucking easy. You should know.”

“Here,” Mickey fumbles his wallet out of his pocket and pulls out what appears to be several hundred dollars. Mandy can’t help but gape. She’s never known him to carry this much money around. Unless he’s just robbed a place.

“I just got paid,” he hisses, clearly recognizing the look on her face. He’s clenches his fist around the money, holds it out to her. “Take it.”

Jesus, not this again.

“You’re joking, right?”

“Wha…?”

“First Ian, now you?”

Mickey stuffs the money back in his pocket and rubs a hand over his face. “What the fuck you talking about?”

“Ian didn’t tell you? He tried to pay me off too. To go away.”

Mickey frowns, chews on his lip. Clearly this is news to him.

“What’s wrong?” Mandy continues, unable to resist the urge to push the knife a little deeper. “Trouble in paradise after all?”

Instead of shouting or lashing out like the repressed fuckhead he is, Mickey’s brow furrows and his mouth twists. “We’re working a lot, aight?” he says defensively. “Don’t see each other much.”

So much for love, Mandy thinks bitterly. It doesn’t pay the bills.

“Look,” says Mickey, and he’s once again holding out the money. “Take this. I won’t tell you to go away because I know you’re a Milkovich. Stubborn as fuck. But you want to get out of there, you get out of there.”

He waves the money at her and she takes it, albeit reluctantly. “You should leave,” he insists. “Go...wherever.”

“You haven’t gone very far,” she notes. Taking one last puff of the joint, she lets the rest of its smouldering butt fall to the ground and crushes it under her heel.

Mickey rubs his nose. “Can’t. Not yet anyway. Dad–” he breaks off, and something close to revulsion crosses his face. “Still have some stuff to take care of with Terry.”

The damn seagull has once again start edging closer. Mandy, who has been watching it, turns so fast her neck cricks. “What? He’ll kill you!”

Mickey, glowering darkly, shakes his head. “No. We’ll be ready this time.”

For all the anger and hate she feels towards the man she now rarely thinks of as her father, Mandy’s not sure if she wants to hear this. If Mickey kills Terry, she at least wants to have plausible deniability on her side.

And yet… “What are you going to do?” she asks carefully.

Mickey lights up a cigarette. “Dunno yet. There’s something we need to fix first. Ian ‘n me.” He sighs. “Mom ever talk to you about  _ babusia _ ?”

Vague memories float up in her head. Their mom had rarely spoken of her family. Anything Anya Milkovich ever said about their grandmother had always been told to them when she’d been high as fuck. “Said she was a witch, I think,” Mandy says. “Don’t remember much else.”

Mickey just nods thoughtfully, watching the gull parade around on the pavement.

“What’s going on Mick?” she asks, disturbed by her brother’s odd behavior.

“Nothing,” he says. He keeps watching the gull, which has waddled up to him and started pecking at the laces of his right boot.

She can’t take it anymore. “What is it with you? What’s with the fucking bird?” Something from the previous night tickles at the back of her mind. 

“Ian has a dog, you know that? Calls it Mick.”

Her brother gets to his feet. The sun has started to set over the flat tops of the housing blocks before them. “Gotta go,” he says. On the ground, the gull hops away from his feet and swings itself into the air. Both Mandy and Mickey follow its flight as it wheels in a circle above them and lets out a cry.

“Have to go,” Mickey says again. "Take care, aight." To Mandy’s surprise he pulls her into a rough hug. She’s stunned enough by the unexpected gesture that she only manages a brief pat on his back before he let’s go of her.

Then he’s off, running across the street to the shittiest looking block. Mandy looks up and sees the gull veer around, flying after him. It settles on a window ledge, on the tenth, Mandy realizes, counting. When she looks back down, her brother is gone. Back on ledge, the gull has gone too.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Though I am, as I have mentioned, timing the posting of the fic to the solar eclipse that's taking place over continental US on the 21st, the timeline of this fic itself follows Season 4 of Shameless. Based on [this amazingly detailed timeline](http://milkovichfeels.tumblr.com/post/89591494376/shameless-us-timeline), the events of this fic take place around Jan/Feb, hence the references to snow/ice/cold, etc. 
> 
> Thank you all who have kudos-ed and reviewed thus far.


	3. tell him he’s a dead man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Misogynistic and homophobic language. Abuse. Terry's in this chapter.

There’s a brief moment where Mandy considers running after Mickey. Pummeling him until breaks, opens up, tells her what the fuck is going on with him and Ian. Why they’ve both left their families but stuck around South Side anyway. Why the secrecy.

But Mandy knows Mickey, and she knows that the harder she pushes, the more he’ll clam up. She’s like that too, constantly on guard, cautious about letting people in. Except Gallaghers, apparently. Those Irish idiots just barge right in, breaking down whatever walls she’s worked so hard to put up.

She walks back to the El. With the setting of the sun, the sudden drop in temperature is palpable, especially when Chicago lives up to its name of the Windy City. Mandy finds herself longing for summer, for shorts and skirts, and cool drinks, and the sun on her skin. She pulls her coat tighter around herself.

The El station is only partially crowded, it being too early for people to start leaving their offices yet. Mandy leans back against a billboard and pulls out her phone. She sends off a text to some people she knows, asking if they know about any jobs, then starts browsing through Craigslist job listings. Its reputation make many people avoid it for job searches, assuming they mostly involve illegal shit, but she’s found several good legal jobs there. And also several decent illegal ones too. It’s Craigslist after all.

A listing catches her eye, and soon she’s perusing the job requirements for a pet store assistant (friendly, flexible work hours, no experience required except liking animals,  and a “pawsitive attitude”). It sounds doable, and she’s saving the number to her phone when a shadow falls over her.

She looks up, bares her teeth, ready to snap whatever fuckhead decided that she looked like someone who’d be interested in ‘casual conversation’ or whatever else guys nowadays call ‘being a creep’.

It’s Ian.

“Hey,” he says, smiling like they hadn’t spent last night shouting at each other.

“Ian,” she says flatly. “Aren’t you on the wrong platform?” She’s headed further south. If he’s going to work, he should be heading up.

“Just wanted to say hi. And apologize, about last night.” He reaches out as though to touch her, but pulls his hand back so that it just brushes her sleeve and falls back limply by his side. Yet somehow that touch feels like it burns, all the way through her clothes to her skin.

Mandy suppresses a shudder. “It’s fine,” she says. “Whatever.”

“You saw Mickey.” It’s a statement, not a question.

She says, “Yeah.” She wonders what Mickey told him when he got home. If that’s where Ian had been. Couldn’t Mickey have brought her up, to their apartment, so she could meet them both instead of lurking outside in the cold? Why the elaborate song-and-dance routine, taking turns to talk to her?

He moves back to stand next to her, tapping his foot. She notices that he’s carrying a backpack and has a sports bag hanging from one hand. As she watches closely, the bag squirms.

“Is that your _dog_?” she asks, almost gaping in disbelief.

“Shhh!” Ian hisses, finger to his lips, eyes darting around in a way that seems almost excessive. “Don’t talk so loudly!”

Mandy looks around the sparsely crowded platform. “Really, Ian?” Nobody’s even looking at them, everyone engrossed in their own business, eager to go home.

“Can’t bring dogs on the El,” Ian explains, his voice still hushed. Seriously, his behavior is starting to weird Mandy out.

“Well yeah,” says Mandy, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow. “So leave him at home. A few hours alone won’t kill him.”

Ian shakes his head. The foot tapping turns into leg jiggling. “Can’t. I can’t...don’t like leaving him alone, y’know.” He carefully puts the sports bag down. It shifts a little again as the dog–Mandy still can’t think of it as Mick, it’s just too weird–settles. She looks at Ian who’s bouncing restlessly on the spot, eyes constantly roving around the platform.

Reminded of his behavior at the club last night, she asks, “You’re not high right now, are you?”

Another head shake. “Wired. Had a Red Bull.”

“Okay.”

He stops jiggling his leg for a second, looks at her. “Wait, why are you here? Don’t you have work?”

Sticking her hand in her pocket, Mandy fumbles for her cigarettes, contemplating pulling one out. Whatever effects the weed has had on her, they’re rapidly fading. Must be the shit quality, or maybe it’s just the fact that dealing with Ian and Mickey and their creepy as fuck ‘ships passing in the night’ thing is driving her mad. The entire point of running away like some fucked up gay Romeo and Juliet is to be together, she’d thought. Though seeing that R’n’J had ended up dead, those two probably weren’t the best relationship goals for runaway boyfriends.

“Got fired,” she mutters, pulling out her lighter instead and toying with the wheel.

Ian makes a face. “Sucks.”

“Yeah, fucking tell me about it.”

The foot tapping and leg jiggling resumes. It makes it hard to look at him, like he’s vibrating under his skin enough to make his features odd and alien. His eyes, she realizes, scare her. Maybe it’s because she’s always looking at him under bright lights, but they seem glassy, shallow-like, the green-blue shine of an oily puddle. “I could get you a job.”

Mandy snorts. “What, at your gay club? Not sure I’ve got the right equipment for that.”

“Nah. There are other places in the area though. Or I could talk to some of my regulars.”

Regulars. Jesus. “Are you and Mickey...okay?” she ventures. She honestly doesn’t know what her brother would be like in a relationship since she’s never actually seen him in one, but Milkoviches are possessive. She should know, she’d run that bitch Karen over with her car. Mickey can’t be too happy about his boyfriend shaking his ass at all the fat geriatric queens that'd been drooling over him.

The leg jiggling intensifies. Ian’s almost bouncing on the spot. On the floor, the sports bag shifts. She spots the dog’s snout nosing at the gap in the zip, the pit bull sensing Ian’s agitation.

“Yeah, we’re fine,” Ian says. For the first time since they’ve started talking, he looks at her and smiles. It’s sincere, but strained. The glassiness in his eyes lifts. At their feet, the dog chuffs in its makeshift carrier. Then the moment breaks, the sheen sweeps back into his gaze, his eyes dart away.

Not knowing what else to say, Mandy turns away. She’s saved anyway from the awkward silence when the train finally rattles into the station. She starts forward, then stops, waiting for Ian to join her, but he remains where his is.

Right. He’s going to work. He’s not coming down to the South Side with her, back home.

She takes another step, stops again. Looks back. “See you, I guess.”

Ian gives her nod and a half-shrug, like that’s not the most fucking ambiguous answer he could give her. For a split-second she considers staying, going up with him to Boystown, following him back home, demanding answers, demanding a fucking reaction.

But like with Mickey, she doesn’t. It feels wrong, it feels needy. She doesn’t want to be that girl again, trailing after a Gallagher for any scrap of love and attention he’d throw her way. She’s better than that. Or maybe she's just too proud.

So she gets on the train. Ian’s still there when the doors side shut. She can see him tap out a cigarette, light up despite the **NO SMOKING** sign hanging right above her head. Then the train jerks forward, and she loses sight of him amidst the blurring lights and the darkness outside.

  

* * *

 

After a day full of confrontations and unexpected meetings, Mandy’s not expected to be cornered in her own home. Even less so, to be cornered by Svetlana.

It feels a bit surreal at first, to be confronted in the narrow Milkovich kitchen, surrounded by the delicious smell of goulash, by a Russian whore with a claw hammer in her hand, the tool pointed threateningly at Mandy’s face. “You have seen him.”

“What?” says Mandy, trying to push past the madwoman. She regrets giving her riot stick to Debbie Gallagher.

Svetlana plants her feet, shakes her hammer at Mandy. “My piece of shit husband. And his carrot boy.”

Mandy stops, her heart leaping to her throat. “The fuck?” she yells, trying to sound surprised and incredulous. “How the hell would I have met them? I don’t even know where they are.”

Svetlana takes a step closer. The good part about that is that it’ll make it harder for her to swing the hammer. The bad part: she’ll swing it if she has to. Mandy can see it her eyes. “Don’t lie to me,” Svetlana hisses. “I can tell, you are lying.”

“Yeah?” Mandy finds herself taking a step back. Then another. And another. She hopes there’s a knife somewhere on the kitchen counter. She hopes Svetlana won’t be fast enough. “What have you done to them, you Russian cunt?”

The other woman shakes her head. She looks both angry and exasperated. “You stay away from them. Is not safe.”

Wait...that’s her concern? Mandy’s safety? She snorts. “Since when do you care?” She feels her back fetch up against the kitchen counter. Reaching out blindly–there! Her hands find the slim grip of a knife. She whips it front of her, holding it up threateningly.“Tell me or I’ll fucking cut you.”

Laughter. Svetlana doesn’t even take a step back. Just laughs, and raises her eyebrows. “You peel my face?”

Mandy looks at what she’s holding. It’s not a knife, it’s a vegetable peeler. She didn’t even know they owned one.

“ _Fuck_.”

“You Milkoviches all the same,” Svetlana says. “Big bark. Pussy bite.”

Mandy angrily tosses the peeler in the sink. “Yeah? We still live in the same house, bitch. You think I won’t come into your room while you’re sleeping, and stab you and your hellbaby in the face? Fucking try me.”

Svetlana’s lips peel back from her teeth in a snarl. One hand goes protectively over her swollen stomach. “You die before you even touch me.”

Mandy answers with a snarl of her own. “Then back the fuck off, bitch.”

They circle each other for a few more moments, each sizing up the other. Then Svetlana takes a step back and crosses her arms. The hammer remains in her grip though. Mandy allows herself to relax. Now that she doesn’t have to focus completely on Svetlana, she takes stock of the kitchen. There’s a paring knife in the sink, next to the peeler she’d tossed in. She makes a note of it. Just in Svetlana gets too happy with the hammer again.

“So what your brother and orange boy tell you?”

“Why is that any of your fucking business?” Mandy asks again.

Svetlana shrugs. “They tell you to leave, you go. Better for you. Your father is dangerous man.”

Why why _why_ is everyone constantly telling her to leave? “Yeah, I like don’t fucking know.” She suddenly remembers her conversations with Ian and Mickey. Both had implied unfinished business with Terry. “What has he done? What did he make you do?”

Svetlana says “Nothing,” just a little too quickly. She uncrosses her arms and sets the hammer down on the table. The anger has faded. She looks tired now, wary. “Whatever happened, none of my business.” Both hands free, they curl around the swell of her belly.

Mandy isn’t buying it though. “Yeah right. I’m sick and tired of everyone dropping these hints and shit, and no one fucking tells me what’s going on.”

The Russian rolls her eyes. “You want to know? You want to know, you stupid little girl?” Her hands suddenly come down on the wooden kitchen table between them. Mandy jumps a little at the _thud_ her fists make. “You run. You do not know what you are getting into.

Your brother and his lover. They are doomed. You cannot help them.”

Mandy opens her mouth to say something but Svetlana bulldozes on.

“You know nothing, you are like child.” She has pulled out a chair, sat herself down with a careful thump. She once again strikes the table, an open-palmed smack this time, and Mandy is suddenly caught off guard by a memory of her mother, sober for once, rapping the table with her wooden spoon after she’d caught Mandy sneaking a pierogi before dinner.

It’s like Svetlana reads her mind. “Your mother, she comes from Old Country, yes?” she asks.

Mandy nods mutely.

“Like my mother, like my grandmother,” Svetlana continues. “There, _mahiya_ , magic, is real. You listen to stories like Baba Yaga, you think fairy tale. Nice, pretty stories. Like your Disney, yes? Happily ever after, all that shit. In the end the witch die. Truth, they leave, leave Old Country, come here. Like your _babusia_ , your mama. Bring their magic with them.

“Your brother, is fool. Should have married me. Keep his mouth shut. Tell his orange lover to stay away. Boys like him, like to fuck each other up the asshole, they always die in the stories.”

She takes a breath after that alarming statement. Then another and another. Her speech seems to have winded her. Suddenly she winces and her hand flies to her belly. Rubbing it soothingly, she murmurs a few words in Russian. It could have been anything, a term of endearment, a lullaby, but Mandy feels a chill run over her spine.

“What are you?” she whispers.

Svetlana smiles a bitter smile.

“Cursed. Like your brother.” She sighs, and continues to run her hand over her stomach, though the motion seems to be more to soothe herself than for her fetus. “Maybe if he stayed, I can help him. But now he is gone. You cannot help them.”

“Stop saying that,” Mandy says, and hates that her voice shakes.

Another shrug from Svetlana. “Is truth. You American’s like your pretty white lies.”

“We fucking get shit done,” Mandy snaps. “You Ruskies just drink, lie down and die.”

Then she has to sit down. And laugh. She laughs until her sides hurt. She’s been having the weirdest fucking day of her life, and she’s pretty sure it hasn’t even been twenty-hours yet. Jesus. She wants to sleep.

She slumps forward, resting her head on her arms. God, she’s tired.

“So there’s magic. My brother–and Ian?–are cursed. My dad has something to do with it.” She sits up and pushes her hair back from her face. “Say I believe everything you said. Like, one hundred percent of it. What do I do?”

Svetlana gives her an incredulous look, complete with an eyebrow-raise worthy of Mickey. “You are stubborn.”

“I’m a Milkovich.”

“Means you are also stupid.”

“Can’t let Mickey hog all of it.”

Svetlana smiles, actually _smiles_. “I like you. Better than your brother. So I will–”

Her smile abruptly vanishes. She lurches to her feet, and Mandy leaps to her own.

“What’s wrong?”

The Russian closes her eyes and spits out a curse. “Your father is coming.” When she opens her eyes, they are hard again. “He is angry, as always."

“I know how to handle him.” Mandy’s been doing it all her life. She’s still alive, so it’s clearly been working.

A head shake. “No. No, you don’t.”

Running her hand through her hair, Mandy contemplates the nicked and scarred surface of the table. It’s insane how much her life has turned upside down in span of a less than a day. This morning, her main concern had been getting to work on time. Then it had been finding a new job. Now it’s apparently saving her best friend and her brother from her father. Fuck her life. Seriously.

“What are you going to do?” she asks Svetlana. She wonders why the woman hasn’t left. She said she’d been cursed. Has Terry done something to her too?

“I have my baby, then I see,” Svetlana says. She’s taken her spot by the stove again, stirring the goulash and setting out plates.

“So you’re just gonna play house with Terry?”

Svetlana smiles a sharp, sly smile, though it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “I have played this game before. You think only Americans play to win?”

“Right,” Mandy mutters, and seeks refuge in the bathroom. She strips off what’s left of her stupid Waffle Cottage costume and steps into the shower. The water’s only lukewarm, so she scrubs down quickly, head tilted to keep her hair out of the water. After she’d dried and dressed, she lights a cigarette on the toilet, hoping the nicotine will calm her nerves. Idly, she toes the stack of gun mags piled on the floor, remembering when she’d found Ian’s picture in there. She should probably give that picture and its cumstains back to Mickey.

Realizing that she can’t put it off any longer, she dumps the remainder of her cigarette in the toilet and flushes. In the kitchen, her father is seated at the table, scraping his plate clean. “More,” he grunts, pushing his plate at Svetlana, who is seated at the other end of the table, dragging pieces of stale toast through her goulash.

“I’ll do it,” Mandy interjects, taking Terry’s plate to the stove and filling it up, before doing the same for herself.

Her father just grunts in acknowledgment as she sets the plate down in front of him. Taking her own plate, Mandy leans against the counter, slowly spooning the hot stew into her mouth. It’s good: hearty and warming and just right for the season.

Between the warmth of the food and the unusual silence in the house broken only by the scrape and clatter of spoons against plates, Mandy finds herself zoning out. She’s warm, she’s fed, nobody’s screaming and throwing shit. Svetlana’s warnings seem nothing more than crazed ramblings. Maybe she’s just got some rivalry thing going, trying to get Mandy out of the house so that she can be the Head Bitch In Charge.

“Where have you been?”

When her father suddenly speaks, she startles so hard that the spoon falls out of her hand and clatters to the floor, spraying goulash over the cupboard doors.

“Shit,” she mutters, putting down her plate and scrabbling for the spoon and a rag to wipe the floor with. Not that anyone’ll care, the house is filthy enough already. But it lets her avoid eye contact with Terry, or with Svetlana.

When she stands back up, however, Terry’s looking at her with expectantly. His eyebrows are raised, and since they’re not as severe as Mickey’s the look isn’t as striking, but it’s an annoying reminder of where her brother learned the habit.

“I was at work,” she says, dumping plate, spoon and rag into the sink.

“Really,” says her father, and fuck, she wishes he’d start yelling. Hell, she’d even take the beating. That she can handle, not Terry’s false pretenses at civility when he’s fucking with her head. “Looking for a new job, I heard. Somewhere in Boystown?”

Mandy freezes. 

“Yeah,” she says, licking her lips. Her throat feels dry. “I was thinking, more tips, less groping.”

Terry grunts and drains his beer. Svetlana, the ass kisser, has already opened another, and replaces the empty bottle with the fresh one. For a moment Mandy dares to believe the interrogation is over, then he says, “Joey brought me a flier last week. Found it on the street. You still looking for the Gallagher boy?”

He shouldn't know it's her. The flier says to call Michelle. He doesn't know her number. “His sister asked me to help her look for him,” she tries to say as nonchalantly as possible.

“Thought you broke up,” Terry says, and Mandy’s pretty sure she’s in fucking purgatory or hell or something because her father’s never taken any interest in her relationships before. He barely even noticed Ian except for that time with the pregnancy that she doesn’t want to think of right now.

“That boy’s trouble,” he continues to say, and Mandy is genuinely terrified now. At the table, Svetlana has stopped faking an interest in her meal, and has slowly started to edge away from the table, her hands curled protectively in front of her. “Stay away from him.”

“And as for the other one,” he adds, and Mandy knows very clearly whom he’s referring to. “If you see that fag again, tell him he’s a dead man.”

Maybe it’s the stress of the day. Maybe it’s the fucking mystery of Ian and Mickey, or Svetlana’s magic speech, or the fact that Terry is really creeping the fuck out of her right now. Mandy usually has a better sense of self-preservation. She knows when to keep her mouth shut. But for some reason the words spill out of her mouth. She can’t help them. “That _fag_ is your _son_.”

He hits her so hard her head smacks back against the kitchen cabinet. Between the smarting of her cheek, the throbbing in her head and the ringing in the ears, Mandy loses any sense of balance, and crashes to her knees in the kitchen. Despite the pain, she feels an overwhelming sense of relief. They’re back in familiar territory. She can handle this.

Above her, Terry rages. “That goddamn AIDS monkey is not my son! He is dead!” His boot lashes out and Mandy shrinks away, but it doesn't strike her, sinking into the cupboard she’s cowering against, wood splintering.

“Turning my own daughter against me,” he growls. “I’ll kill him!”

She flinches when he stoops down and grabs her by the chin. His pale blue eyes are crazed. “Stay away from him,” he says.

Then he steps over her like she’s so much garbage. She hears a coat rustle, bottles clink. The gun cabinet opens, she can tell from the familiar squeak of its hinges and the rack of a gun, the slide of a clip. Then the front door slams and silence once again descends.

Seconds pass. Maybe minutes.

Mandy starts to breathe again.

“You are stupid,” Svetlana mutters. A slim hand appears in Mandy’s field of vision, and she allows the other woman to help her to her feet. Svetlana’s hand rises to her cheek, gently turning her face this way and that as she scrutinizes the damage Terry has left. “Nothing broken. I have stuff that will,” she gestures vaguely, “heal quicker.”

Mandy says nothing. She’s just tired. Really fucking tired. She wants to go to bed and forget about everything, about Ian and Mickey and Svetlana and Terry. Maybe this is all some crazy dream caused by bad weed. She’ll wake up and everything will be back to normal again, or as normal as her life can be.

Svetlana lets her go. There’s a look that’s close to concern on her face, but Mandy can’t be fucked to contemplate it. Her bed is soft and comfortable, the sheets cool against her aching cheek. It’ll have blood stains all over it in the morning, but again, she can’t be fucked.

She falls asleep that way, fully dressed on top of the sheets. Without a single fuck to give.

 

* * *

 

It’s harder to not give a fuck when she wakes up, face throbbing. She just lies there for a while, allowing her eyes to adjust. It’s dark and freezing, and the house is silent as the grave. No snoring from her father or brothers, or drunken mumbles, or shouting. Svetlana must be asleep too. Outside there’s the usual South Side soundtrack of the night, the El and cars passing by, shouting, gun shots.

Slowly rolling over, she pulls her bunched up comforter over her legs when she notices her phone blinking with a message. She considers ignoring it, but something tells her it’s important. Sitting up, she squints at the too-bright screen.

It’s Ian. Seven missed calls since about fifteen minutes ago.

She hesitates for a moment, then presses call. He picks up immediately.

“Mandy!”

It's hard to hear him. There’s a screeching sound in the background, so he must be on the El.

“Ian, I can’t–”

“Mandy,” he shouts, and _now_ she can hear him a bit too well. She pulls the phone away from her ear a little. “Why the fuck didn’t you pick up?”

“Fucking sleeping, fuckface,” she yells back, feeling a sudden surge of anger. “Unlike you I’m not whoring out my ass at fuck o’clock in the morning.”

The screeching stops. There’s a pause, and some heavy breathing. Then silence, and for a moment she thinks he’s hung up. The heavy breathing picks up again, and she realizes he’s running. Or fucking. She hopes it’s the former. “Mandy!”

“ _What_?”

“You gotta help me!” He starts babbling and between the rapid-fire words and the panting, she can barely understand a word of what he’s saying.

“Slow down,” she yells again, hoping he’s actually listening to her. “What happened?”

“I’m coming to meet you. I’m headed for your house.”

At this, Mandy rolls off the bed and leaps to her feet. “Are you crazy? No!”

“I need–”

“My dad’ll fucking kill you. Stay where you are, I’ll find you.”

Another pause. Then, “Okay. Okay.” Thank Jesus for Common Sense smiling down upon a Gallagher once in a while.

“I’ll be there,” she promises, throwing whatever clothes she can find into a pillowcase and stuffing it into the biggest backpack she can find in her room. “What the fuck is wrong anyway?”

Now that Ian’s stopped running she can hear him clearly. “It’s Mickey! I mean, Mick, Mick, my dog, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she says.

Something shatters in the background on his end. Ian curses. “Someone took him.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DUn dun dun!
> 
> Writing this chapter was hard, since it involved writing Terry. He generally exists in the show more as a plot device than a character (and I'll be honest, he's pretty much a plot device in this fic too). You can't even say he's a foil to Frank because we see so little of him, and when we do he's basically this crazed, angry monster of a guy. Almost all scenes with him have him screaming or yelling. For the purposes of this fic, I wanted him to appear as a "intelligent" abuser, one who does act reasonable at times (or appears to), and who is more conscious and active in his manipulations/abuse of his children instead of more reactive like he is in the show. Basically, writing Terry is hard. 
> 
> Can you tell, I really love Svetlana. My idea of the perfect Shameless season would just be the Ian/Mickey+Svet dynamic of S5.1, minus Ian cheating and with Mandy sticking around.
> 
> I promise there will be much more Ian and Mickey in the next chapters. Much much more!
> 
> *
> 
> PS I've only ever been to Chicago as tourist doing dumb tourist stuff, and while I've been doing my research, if anything needs Chicago-picking, feel free to let me know.


	4. goddamn fucking Milkoviches

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Violence, cruelty to animals. Please see end notes for more details on the animal cruelty warning.

Nobody stops her from leaving the house. There’s no Terry waiting outside with a fist or a gun. No Iggy with a distraction, a run, playing go-between. No Svetlana, no hammer. She slips out into the night, her most valuable items stuffed in a pillowcase stuffed in her old school backpack, and nobody sees her go.

There’s still that prickling feeling at the back of the neck, like she’s being watched. Who’s she kidding, of course she’s being watched. This is South Side. There’s always some hobo or drunk or junkie awake under the El, some paranoid gangbanger watching through a crack in the window, some insomniac grandma twitching the curtains. The neighborhood’s always watching.

Mandy walks as fast as she can. The pavement’s iced over a little with the night freeze, and some fucking escape–or rescue–this would be if she slipped and split her skull open. Something in her backpack’s wedged in wrong: it pokes into her back with every step, but she can’t stop to fix it. Ian had stayed on the line the whole time she’d been packing, huffing angrily, muttering under his breath, swearing. She’s terrified to think that he may have given her the slip, gone to her house to find her father, only to find himself facing the wrong end of Terry’s gun.

Terry is behind this. There’s no question about it, she knows, she knows, and the pieces are right there in front of her, she just doesn’t know quite how to put them together yet. Svetlana, she is beginning to realize, has tried to help her with yet, but Mandy can’t quite trust her yet. Magic, curses, they don’t belong in her world of guns and fists, where physics gets the job done.

She takes a shortcut through an abandoned lot, one that will get her to the El station faster. Ian told her he’d be waiting there before he’d hung up to save his battery life. It’s dark and there’s a half dead tree in the lot that always creeps her the fuck out, and if she’s lucky, all the junkies are passed out or frozen. South Side or not, her heart hammers in her chest, and she just wishes Ian was here, where the hell is he, Ian…

“Mandy!”

She jumps about a foot in the air, whirls around, sees a shadow detach itself from the lot’s sagging fence.

“Shit, Ian,” she hisses, “you almost scared the shit out of me.”

“Almost,” says Ian, and he gives her a brief grin before it’s wiped away by the grim mask he sometimes puts when he’s really angry but trying not to show it. She’d seen it before during his fight with Lip, and again after he’d found out Mickey was getting married. It’s even scarier this time, with that empty look in his eyes, reflecting the sparse light from the single streetlight a few houses away.

She doesn’t know what she’s expecting from him, maybe to fill her in, to tell her what’s going on, something, anything. Instead he seizes her by the arm, his grip painful and says coldly, “Call Iggy.”

“W-what?” she stutters, caught of guard, trying instinctively to twist her arm free. She’s not used to this kind of treatment from Ian, one of the few boys who’s ever been gentle to her. It starts up that quiet humm of terror in her, the one that’s been buzzing under her skin ever since she’d walked into the Milkovich house that night.

“Call Iggy,” Ian says a little more forcefully, punctuating his order with a little shake of her arm, like she’s some kind of rag doll.

“Get the fuck off me first,” she hisses and punches him in the arm. He lets go thankfully, though she hates that he looks surprised at her reaction, like it hadn’t registered to him that he was hurting her. She takes a few steps back, enough to be out of his immediate reach. “Why the fuck should I call Iggy?”

“God, _shit_ ,” Ian hisses, running his hands through his hair distractedly. “I fucking told you already. Mick’s gone and–”

“Why the fuck would Iggy know anything about your damn dog?” she yells, not caring at this point if anyone’s listening or watching.

“Fucking dog fights!” Ian roars back. “Your fucking family, you goddamn fucking–fucking Milkoviches!” he shouts, grabbing his hair and kicking the ground, sending dirt spraying. He looks like he’s having some kind of psychotic break. Mandy takes another step back, and another. She considers running, then thinks better of it.

Instead, she pulls out her crumpled pack of smokes, puts it between her lips and lights it. Hearing her lighter zip, Ian stops his stomping and swearing, and once she’s sure he’s not about to go off again, she holds out the lit cigarette to him. His hand shakes, she notes, as he takes it from her fingers and sucks on it with a desperate air.

She lights one for herself, and inhales deeply and blows the smoke out through her nose.

“I need to know where your brothers organize the dog fights,” Ian says, sounding a lot calmer now.

“Wasn’t that fucking hard now, was it?” Mandy snaps, not quite satisfied with the unspoken apology behind his request, but she pulls out her phone anyway, and dials Iggy’s number.

The call doesn’t go through. She tries again, and it stops after the first ring. There’s no point trying a third, she’s pretty sure Iggy’s rejecting her calls, either under orders from Terry, or because he’s ignoring all calls except for bookings.

“Fuck,” Ian growls as she puts away her phone. He takes one last inhale and drops the butt of his cigarette to the ground, before grinding it down so hard it’s like he’s trying to put it six feet under with the heel of his boot alone. She wonders whose face he’s imagining under it. Iggy’s or her father’s. Or hers.

Once the cigarette–or face–seems to have been sufficiently squished to death, Ian starts pacing. He’s muttering under his breath again, too low and fast for her to catch the words, but she’s sure they’re not complimentary ones about her family. Worse, he could be running through some kind of stupid scheme that will get them both–and the damn dog–killed.

“I think I know where they are.”

Ian stops pacing, and makes a move like he’s about to grab her again. This time Mandy steps back faster, raising a warning hand. He stops, but it looks like he’s barely restraining himself. “Why the fuck didn’t you say so?”

“It’s been freakin' ages since I’ve been!” she snaps.

Colin used to bring her and Mickey along when they were kids. Nobody gave a shit about what the youngest Milkoviches were up to on their own, but sometimes their mother had managed to bribe Iggy or Colin to take care of their younger siblings for a while. Colin liked the dog fights, and would bring Mandy and Mickey along. Usually he’d lock them in one of the makeshift offices, but every now and then he brought them down to the ring, and taught them the finer details of collecting and laying bets, knowing how to identify which dog was a scrapper and which was a wash, how to know which underdog was worth rooting for. She’d stopped going with him once she’d been old enough to take care of herself–which wasn’t very old anyway–and Mickey never really picked up that part of the family business, preferring guns and drugs.

The men in her family are, to an extent, creatures of habit. And Terry probably doesn’t know that Colin used to take her and Mickey to the fights. And if she’s guessing right, they’re in one of the warehouses further south, where the fight clubs take place too.

“Let’s go!” Ian says, making to dash off the moment she tells him the location.

She grabs him by the sleeve. “We can’t just barge in there! My father will kill you!”

“I’d like to see him try,” Ian snarls, and she realizes for a heart-stopping moment that he means it. And as uncharitable as she feels about Terry, she doesn’t want Ian to kill him. Mostly because it would mean Ian going to jail. Terry’s not worth Ian ruining his for. It’s also for more likely that Terry will kill Ian, then her, and then the stupid fucking dog.

“We should get help,” she suggests. She hates that she’s thinking about it, but Lip’s the first person to come to mind. “Your brother.”

Ian snorts. “No fucking way.”

“Lip–”

“No.”

“We can’t just–”

“Fuck no, Mandy. We’re not going to Lip. What use will he be anyway?”

He has a point. Ian’s the Gallagher she’d go to for winning a fight. Lip’s a decently scrappy fighter too, but aside from lacking the benefits of Ian’s height and build, he’s more of a strategist and planner. Useful, but being Lip, he’d stubbornly demand an explanation before agreeing to help, and they don’t have the time for that.

“We need to go,” Ian says as though on cue. “Mick could be dead already for all we know.” Without waiting for her, he sets off down the street.

That’s why you don’t name your damn pets after people. It just fucks with your head.

 

* * *

  
Getting into the warehouse isn’t all too hard. There’s a lookout by the entrance, but he doesn’t recognize her, and Ian makes sure his hair’s under a beanie, just in case they’ve been told to look out for angry redheads. It’s also very likely that Terry isn’t expecting them to stroll right the fuck in.

There’s also the possibility that this might be a trap.

Quite a sizable crowd is gathered today. From what she recalls, there are usually several fighting pits open at the same time, and one main one tends pit the champions of the smaller fights against each other. That’s the main money maker, and the goriest. People bring in their seasoned brutes in and pit them against each other. Sometimes a dying bait animal from another pit is thrown in for added entertainment. Hearing the shouts and yells of the men, and the growls and whimpers from the animals reminds her why she never tries too hard to remember this part of her upbringing.

Next to her, Ian’s practically twitching with fury. She can see that his hands are curled to fists in the pockets of his jacket, and his teeth are clenched so hard it looks painful. Realizing that they’ve only got so much time before Ian loses it, and brings down the fury of Terry and everyone in the room down upon them, she grabs him by the arm and leads him towards the main ring.

Men are packed so tightly around the ring that it’s hard for them to get through. Mandy uses her elbows liberally, glad that most men are distracted enough by the fight to let her through with nothing more than some swearing and the occasional grope when they realize she’s female. Being shorter than most of the crowd, she can’t see into the ring, but as she gets closer she can hear Terry’s voice cut through the shouting. From the sound of it, he’s standing close to the ring, goading one of the dogs.

Next to her Ian freezes. He’s tall enough to see over the heads and into the pit. He’s tall enough to see what’s going on.

“Shit,” she whispers and closes her eyes in despair. They’re going to die.

Ian pushes past her, all caution and rationality thrown to the wind. The surge of bodies that part at his passing knock her back, and struggles to stay on her feet. A hand sneaks its way around her waist, and she bats it away, jabbing her elbow back and hopefully catching the pervert in the balls.

She starts pushing her way forward again when a sudden shout rises up among the crowded men–shock, surprise, drunken taunting.

“What the fuck, man?” someone yells.

“You crazy?”

The next one makes her blood run cold. “Get him out of there!”

“A hundred on Chuckie!”

All tools in her arsenal come out, elbows, knees, fists. She stomps on a foot, snaps her teeth at a hand that threatens to come too close to her face. Someone tries to pull her back by her hair and she whirls around and claws blindly at his face until he lets her go.

When she finally gets to the front, it’s a nightmare.

Ian’s on his ass at the center of the waist-high plywood ring. He’s doing a real shitty job of rescuing Mick, since his pit bull seems to be the only thing standing between his stupid ginger ass and the slavering jaws of another dog twice Mick’s size. Ian’s dog isn’t faring so well. It’s clearly been in the ring for a while. Bleeding from a bite in its haunches, and from scratches in its shoulder, it keeps listing to one side, even as it throws itself again and again at the other dog to keep it away from Ian. Ian meanwhile is trying to get to his feet, his efforts being hampered by the crowd, which keeps reaching into the small ring and pushing him around, throwing bottles and trash at him to keep him unbalanced. And amidst the chaos is Terry. Mandy’s not sure what she’d been expecting. To her, there’s a growing divide between the man who is Terry and the man who is (was) her father. But Milkovich blood ties are complicated, insidious things. There’s no expression on his face as he watches the two dogs fight, not even when Ian’s kick gets the larger dog in the jaw and sends it flying into the wall. Then he looks up, catches her eye and she knows what to do.

She hadn’t told Ian about the gun she’d brought from her home. There was the chance he was just going to rush in shooting, and he’d be dead before they’d even gotten into the warehouse. She’d managed to take it out of her bag and stuff it into her cleavage on the way without him noticing, the weight of it pulling uncomfortably at her bra while it poked and bruised her breasts. Thank fuck for winter, since it’s no one questions the zipper of her parka being drawn up to her neck, and her angry swatting away of wandering hands during the weapons check at the door was interpreted as anger against the harassment. It had probably also helped that the guys were drunk.

So she unzips her parka and pulls out the Glock, and some tiny part of her brain that’s desperately trying to escape this madness that is her life wants to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Mandy Milkovich, _femme fatale_. Watch her pull a gun out of her cleavage as she decides whether or not to shoot her father.

Ian’s yelling joins in with the rest of the shouting. In the ring, Mick has collapsed. Ian, still on his ass, tries to pull the unconscious dog into his arms while trying to shake off the grip the other dog’s teeth have on his leg.

 _Shit_. She makes a choice. Takes off the safety, aims as best as she can in the jostling crowd and shoots. The first misses, sinking into the floor and sending chips of concrete flying everywhere. The sound rings through the warehouse. Everyone freezes, then a frisson travels through the crowd like an electric current. Suddenly she’s being jostled again, this time from people moving away from the ring, trying to get out, either to escape or to grab their own weapons.

In the ring, Ian’s gotten to his feet, swaying as he kicks again and again at the dog attacking him. Suddenly something connects right, or it’s just received one too many blows to the head. The dog falls limp, keels over, and Ian’s able to shake his leg free from its jaws.

Amidst the chaos, Terry remains standing by the ring. There’s finally some expression his face, at its more terrifying than his anger. Betrayal. And it’s aimed at her. Before she can react, his arm comes up swinging, a gun in his hand. Mandy flinches instinctively, but it isn’t aimed at her. Instead it’s pointed down into the pit.

Mandy screams, raises her own weapon but it’s too late. A shot rings out, Ian yells. Her finger tightens reflexively on the trigger, and she’s jerked backwards by the kickback, but she has managed to hit Terry. Or something, she’s not sure. But he’s turned away, bent double, and she doesn’t even think. Just reaches, screaming, for Ian, grabbing him by the hood of his parka and dragging him out, over the wall of the pit, out the warehouse and down the nearest alley. He stumbles behind her, weighed down by his stupid dog that they’ve nearly died for as they take one turn then another, trying to shake off any possible followers until the sound of shouting and police sirens fade into the distance, and she doesn’t even know where the fuck they are anymore

They end up behind a liquor store. Mandy grabs the nearest wall for balance, bends over and throws up. She gags and retches until all that’s left is the bitter taste of bile. The gun’s still in her other hand. It’s shaking, and she quickly puts on the safety, empties it, clears the chamber and tucks it in the back of her jeans. Only then does she dare to look to her friend.

Kneeling on the cold filthy ground, Ian’s hunched over his dog as he murmurs platitudes and promises, and pleads and begs. For one horrible moment, she thinks the pit bull is dead, then she sees its tail wag, and Ian’s whispers turns to choked laughter.

“Oh Jesus fuck,” he says, “Thank God. _Mickey_.” And over and over again, “Mickey, Mickey, Mickey,” like a mantra as the dog snuffles in his arms and licks his face.

It’s a touching reunion, and distracting enough that it takes her several moments before she notices that Ian’s bleeding.

“Fuck, Ian,” she exclaims. Drops to her knees next to him and tries to tug his parka off so that she can get a better look at the wound.

He shrugs her off. “My shoulder. Just a graze.”

“It’s still bleeding!” she insists. “We need to have it looked at. And you have to bring Mick to a vet.”

“Yeah,” he says dazedly, looking down at his. Despite being covered in various bleeding wounds, it looks fairly alert, and gazes back at her with its steady, pale blue eyes.

“C’mon.” Mandy slips Ian’s good arm over her shoulder and tries to pull him to his feet. He sways and stumbles, weighed down by his dog. Now that the adrenaline’s worn off, he’s also feeling the effects of the gunshot wound.

“C’mon,” Mandy cajoles again. “It’s almost light. We’ll find a vet for Mick and then we need to take care of your arm.”

But Ian isn’t listening. Instead he’s looking up over the rooftops, where the first rays of daylight are breaking through the sky.

“Fuck,” he breathes, and in his lap, the pit bull whimpers.

Ian runs a soothing hand over Mick’s head, then grabs Mandy’s arm. This time it’s gentle, comforting.

“Mandy,” he says, and the seriousness of his tone catches her off guard. “Thank you for what you’ve done. I know I’ve fucked up your life–”

“Ian–”

“Listen to me, Mandy,” he begs. “Just...I’m so sorry I’ve fucked up your life. And Mickey’s. It’s...it’s a Gallagher thing, we’re hurricanes, we blow in and leave a fucking mess everywhere. You have the money Mick gave you?”

She nods.

“I’ve got some more in my bag. Take it.” She opens her mouth to protest again but he shakes his head and she falls silent. “You should go. Far away, go to California or something. Forget about this,” he gestures to their surroundings, “this shithole.”

Then he catches her gaze and this time there’s none of that glassiness, none of that not-all-there glaze. Clear and focused, they seem to look right into her soul. She swallows, feeling like she should prepare herself for the worst.

“What’s going on, Ian?” she whispers.

He laughs bitterly. “If you stay, you’ll find out soon enough.”

The sun’s high enough to reflect off the ice on the liquor store’s roof. Ian shoulder’s twitch, then a full body convulsion seems to travel right through him. “Fuck,” he groans, hunching over. “Hurts.”

In his lap, the dog’s started whimpering again. It too convulses, the spasms sending it rolling right off Ian’s lap. He reaches out for it but is bent double again by another tremor.

“Ian?” Mandy whispers, the name catching in her throat.

Though he’s bent over, trembling with...pain? Exhaustion? She has no idea what the fuck is going on. But he looks up at her through his lashes and gives her a small smile. “We’ll live, Mands. Just...please make sure Mickey’s all right.”

“What the hell?” she yells. She can’t even see them anymore. The sun, it’s blinding her, despite the fact that she has her back to it, despite there being hardly any ice to reflect off. It’s gets so bright she has to turn away and cover her eyes with her forearm.

Then just as suddenly the brightness fades. Blinking to get her vision to adjust, she looks down at the figure curled in the alley. Except that’s not Ian anymore. Dark hair, not red. Smaller, stockier, covered bleeding gashes and what look like bite marks.

Mandy looks to her brother lying naked on the ground, then to the pile of clothes where Ian had been moments before. His discarded shirt appears to be breathing slightly.

Mickey groans, sits up and opens his eyes. He looks dazed and tired, but recognition lights up in his eyes when his roving gaze falls briefly on Mandy. His first “Fuck,” comes out as a croak, then he’s crawling towards Ian’s clothes.

Someone else is saying “Oh god oh god oh god,” over and over again, and takes Mandy a moment to realize it’s her. She claps her hand over her mouth, muffling the noise but her brain picks up the chant instead. _Oh god oh god oh god_.

Mickey’s still crouched on the ground, bleeding in various places from the bites, from the scratches, covered in dirt and worse, hair sticking on end. There’s something bundled in his hands, and there’s a look on his face that’s strikingly tender and fearful at the same time as he cradles it to his chest. Then he turns to look up at her and his face hardens.

“Stop freaking the fuck out,” he snarls, “and do something.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Depictions of dog fighting rings. Violence between two dogs. Mandy recalls some fairly graphic things involving cruelty to animals, and Ian hurts a dog in self-defense. 
> 
> \--------
> 
> Well, we've finally reached the reveal! What happens next? 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has kudosed and reviewed thus far.


	5. flightless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh god, this has been my longest chapter yet. Enjoy.

“Stop freaking the fuck out,” Mickey snarls, “and do something.”

It must the familiarity of their sibling insults and bickering that quiets the noise in Mandy’s head and pushes her to action.

“Where’s Ian?” she cries, dropping painfully to her knees next to his empty clothes. “What happened to him?”

“I’ve got him,” he says, “I’ve got him.”

She stares at the bundle he has clutched to his chest. It’s Ian’s t-shirt, wrapped around something. Heavily stained with blood, it has left smeared patches of red all over Mickey’s arms and chest. Between the shirt and his own wounds, the air between them smells heavily of iron.

“Ian?” she asks, and reaches out tentatively. Mickey shrinks back, and curls protectively around it.

“Don’t,” he warns.

“Please,” Mandy begs. “I need to see.”

Carefully, ever so carefully, Mickey peels back the shirt. Nestled the crook of his arm, wrapped in Ian’s bloodstained shirt, is a white seagull. One wing is folded tight against its body. The other is held away slightly, feathers askew and covered with blood. Its eyes are closed, but as Mickey runs a gentle finger over its head, it opens beady yellow-green eyes and cocks its head.

“Ey,” Mickey whispers, keeping up the gentle finger strokes. “How you feelin’, tough guy?”

Ian, the gull–Jesus, that’s Ian–gives a weak caw.

“Holy fuck,” Mandy finds herself muttering.

She recognizes the orange beak. It’s the gull that had been harassing the pigeons as she’d talked to Mickey yesterday, the one that had kept giving her the evil eye. Turns out it’d been Ian, being a dick in avian form too.

“We have to bring him to a vet,” says Mickey, tucking the t-shirt carefully back over his wounded boyfriend. He tries to climb to his feet, but his legs don’t seem to quite want to cooperate. It doesn’t help that he can’t use his hands to push himself to his feet, since they’re both wrapped around Ian.

After watching several more clumsy attempts, Mandy can’t take it anymore. “Let me hold him.”

Mickey clutches Ian tighter, jostling the gull enough that he lets out an irritated caw.

“Look, you’re hurting him,” Mandy says, and that does the trick.

With a sigh, Mickey carefully passes Ian over to her. The fussing is ridiculous, Mickey making sure each fold of cloth is tucked correctly, and that Ian isn’t being smothered in her armpit or something.

“Jesus, Mickey, I’ve got him.”

He glares at her. “Drop him and I’ll kill you.”

Mandy flips him off. She doesn’t even have to move her hand to do it. Her brother’s being paranoid. “I’m not a fucking idiot, Mick.”

With Ian secure in her arms, he struggles to his feet. Kneeling at crotch level, Mandy averts her gaze too late and gets eyeful more than she ever expected to see of her brother.

“Put on some fucking clothes, you pervert."

He gives her the finger, and stumbles over to the rest of Ian’s clothes. There’s a moment before he takes his first step where he looks utterly confused, like he’s not used to being on two legs and can’t quite figure what to do with his hands. It probably doesn’t help that whatever shit was done to him as a dog has transferred to his human form, which means that he can’t quite put his weight on his right foot and that he holds his right shoulder stiffly. He almost falls over again when he tries to pick Ian’s jeans up. For a second, Mandy considers helping, but decides to stay put, knowing that Mickey’ll just reject the offer and push her away. Besides, Ian has closed his eyes and gone distressingly still. She’s worried about his wing. How bad would a gunshot wound to his human body affect his bird form?

When she risks another glance over at Mickey, he’s successfully put on Ian’s boxers and hoodie, but continues to struggle with jeans. It’s probably because they’re a bit narrower at the hip than he’s used to, and several inches too long. Mandy has to bite back a laugh as he stumbles around, swearing, and even Ian pushes his head free to have a look and give a laugh-like warble.

“You can both go fuck yourselves,” Mickey mutters, stuffing his feet into Ian’s shoes.

Mandy gets to her own feet, keeping a careful hold of Ian until Mickey gets Ian’s coat on too. She tries not to feel offended when her brother practically snatches Ian away from her, as gently as he can, like she’s the one with the reputation for violence and thuggishness instead of him.

As Mickey tries to figure out where they are, she checks to make sure her gun is still in her bag, feeling slightly paranoid after the events of last night. In the light of the sun, it’s all starting to feel like a really strange nightmare. If it weren’t for the fact that she’d seen her brother turn into a dog and her best friend turn into a seagull in front of her own eyes, she’d be questioning her own sanity.

“Ey, c’mon,” Mickey calls, startling her from her thoughts. He’s already disappearing around the corner, and Mandy muses at how odd it is to be looking at the familiar back of Ian’s gray parka without seeing his familiar shock of red hair above the collar.

Mickey’s limping down the street as fast as his injured leg allows him, and she follows at a slower pace, keeping an eye out for suspicious figures, trying to place their location among the unfamiliar streets and buildings. If Terry had managed to steal Mickey from the club, it goes to reason he might be watching them in some way or another.

“We’re looking for a vet, right?” she asks after Mickey makes another turn into a strange street.

He scoffs. “‘Course we’re looking for a damn vet.”

“Right,” says Mandy. “‘Cause I have no idea where we are right now.” They pass an Asian supermarket, a granny turning to stare curiously after Mickey’s limping figure. “How do you know where to find one?”

“Been there before.”

He pauses again, looks around, and this time Mandy notices what he’s actually doing each time he stops. “Are you actually...sniffing for it?”

Mickey turns to her, looking defensive and somewhat abashed. “Benefits to being a dog fourteen hours a day.”

“What does it smell like?”

He shakes his head. “It ain’t the smell–never mind. C’mon!”

As they keep moving she notes that his limp is becoming more pronounced. She considers telling him to stop, take a break, to let her hold Ian, but she knows he’ll just refuse. Mandy herself is beginning to feel the aftermath of a very long night, and it’s only when a passing woman does a double-take at her that she realizes her face is bruised and probably still covered in blood after Terry’s beating last night.

Fucking goes to show what kind of shit life they have, she thinks, that Mickey hadn’t even questioned it. Or maybe he’s too wrapped up in Ian. And really, when she thinks about it, their father, their flesh and blood, tried to have him killed last in one of the worst ways possible. Sometimes she wonders if there’s something wrong with her, with them, the way she can think about and move past shit like this without going crazy. But then that’s the key to surviving. Don’t dive too deep, just skim over the memories each time they come up. Lock them away so that they can’t even come up in the first place. Move the fuck on, as quickly as possible.

Before her, Mickey’s flagging. He almost stumbles into traffic, then steps back so fast he trips. If it weren’t for her, he’d be falling right onto his bitten ass. In his arm, Ian squawks in surprise, and people in the vicinity turn to look for the unexpected noise.

“I’m fine,” Mickey snaps, hunched over defensively as she reaches carefully for his shoulder.

“No, you’re not,” she retorts. “You probably have a fever. Maybe it’s rabies.” She can’t help the tiny twinge of satisfaction she gets from hurling that word at him. It’s terribly belated, petty revenge, but Mickey will take it for the disguised show of affection that it is.

“Fuck,” he mutters. Sweat is beading at his temples, likely proving her point. Luckily enough, they’re passing a dinky little convenience store, and she dashes in to grab some of off-brand Advil and a bottle of water, hurling whatever change she has in her pockets at the yawning cashier. It’s hopefully enough that he won’t bother to come running after them.

“Take these,” she orders her brother, catching up with him despite her quick side tour. He grumbles, but swallows the pills and washes them down with half the bottle.

She looks down at Ian. “Should we give him some?”

“What?” Mickey asks confused. “Advil?”

“Water, stupid.”

Mickey looks down at Ian worriedly. “Dunno. We’re almost at the vet.”

Though Mandy continues to follow him dubiously, he turns out to be right. The vet they’re looking for is a block away, and thanks to the early hour of the morning, isn’t very crowded. Not that Mickey pays any heed to the line. He barges right up to the receptionist and demands to be seen immediately.

“Look, sir, you can’t just–” the harried woman is saying when Mandy joins her brother at the counter.

“I have a right to be seen immediately!” Mickey demands loudly. “It’s a fucking emergency!”

“If you would calm down–”

“Don’t you all fucking take an oath or something, ‘do no–’”

“That’s the physician’s oath, sir, and I’m just the reception–”

“He’s fucking dying!” Mickey’s voice breaks at the last word, and maybe that’s what gives the woman pause. Mandy, knowing to seize the opportunity, pulls the bloody t-shirt away from Ian, revealing the injured wing. Ian adds to the drama by cawing weakly, and Mandy throws in her own trembling, “Please,” hoping to add more to the street urchin vibe than the crazed hobo appearance Mickey’s going for.

“Lord, all right,” the beleaguered woman says, throwing her hands up in the air. “Follow me.”

She leads them through a swinging door down a short passage and shows them to a room. There’s a woman sitting at the desk, scribbling on a legal pad while sipping from her coffee. She looks up in surprise as they crowd into the office.

“Patient for you, doc,” the receptionist says. “His bird’s dyin’.” She gives the vet a significant look. Maybe they have a gun hidden under the desk for crazies like Mickey.

“I’ll be alright, Jan,” she says. The receptionist leaves, and the door closes.

“I need you to check Ian–my uh, bird,” Mickey rushes before the vet can say anything else. He steps forward, and moves to put Ian on her desk, but she quickly holds up her hand to stop him.“Not here. I have an examination room.” She leads them next door, where there’s a stainless steel table and the walls are covered with cabinets full of medical equipment.

“So what’s wrong with your bird?” she asks, getting straight to the point to Mandy’s relief.

Mickey carefully sets Ian down on the table and peels back the bloody t-shirt. Ian looks a bit surprised that he’s no longer wrapped, and cranes his neck as he looks around the room.

God, it’s still weird to think of the bird as Ian.

“A seagull?” the vet exclaims as she snaps on some gloves.

“Yeah,” says Mandy, figuring that this is the right time for her to jump in before Mickey says something stupid.

The woman gently runs her gloved hands over Ian’s back, feeling for muscles or broken bones or something. She carefully guides the bird to stretch out his good wing, then looks to the other. “What happened?”

“Got shot,” Mickey says. His arms are crossed defensively in front of his chest, Ian’s bloody shirt hanging from his hand.

The vet’s eyebrows rise. “Shot?” she echoes.

“Mickey saved him from a dog fight,” Mandy says quickly, ignoring the angry look of alarm he brother shoot her. “One of the people shot at us, and it hit Ian.”

“Ian?”

“Had him since I was a kid,” Mickey says, then colors when he realizes a second later how stupid the lie is.

The vet ignores it however, though Mandy can see a small smile pull at her lips as she bends over Ian’s injury.

“Well, it looks it hasn’t actually broken any of his–Ian’s?–bones,” she demonstrates, carefully running a finger over the uninjured part of the wing. “I’m actually pretty amazed how that happened. You’re very lucky,” she says, and bends down to coo at Ian. “You’re a lucky boy.

Mickey makes a face.

“Well, if he’d actually broken something, for a bird his size, I would have recommended euthanasia–”

Mandy moves before she’s even thinking as Mickey launches himself forward, grabbing the table. She throws an arm around his chest and digs her heels in to pull him back.

“Don’t!” he spits, almost incoherent with anger. “Don’t you fuckin’ dare!”

The vet has fallen back against the cabinets, looking alarmed, and Ian squawks and flaps his good wing in agitation.

“Mickey!” Mandy yells, putting herself between him and the doctor. She pushes, trying to steer him back into the office. “Mickey, shut the fuck up!”

“They can’t–Ian!” He struggles, but it seems more like a token protest at this point, since he could easily push her aside if he wanted to. This close, she can feel the heat radiating off him. His eyes are glazed over.

“Look, she doesn’t know it’s Ian!” she hisses. “She doesn’t fucking know he’s human! Get your shit together!” Mandy manages to get him into the office, kicking the interconnecting door shut behind her. The moment she lets go of him, Mickey turns and collapses into the nearest chair, and puts his face in his hands. His shoulders shake.

“Stay here,” Mandy advises him. She pats him carefully on his uninjured shoulder. “Let me handle this.”

Back in the examination room, the vet has admirably returned to work as though Mickey’s breakdown hadn’t just occurred. “I’m so sorry about my brother,” Mandy apologizes, “He just really loooves, animals, and he’s been feeding Ian down at the pier for years and they bonded or something. Just...please do what you can for the wing and we’ll take care of him.”

The vet nods. “I understand that it is hard, but sometimes it is best for the animal–”

“No! Please, no!” For all her platitudes to Mickey, Mandy feels a surge of terror and anger. “I promise, if he gets worse, if he’s in any more pain, we’ll bring him back but for now, just give him a chance.” She looks down and meets Ian’s trusting green-yellow eyes. “Please. My brother...it’ll kill him if you do. My dad threw him out for being gay and his boyfriend just broke up with him. Ian’s all he has left.”

The woman sighs. “I wasn’t suggesting it. I said it’s what is usually done. That said, Ian here will very likely live, barring the wound gets infected. Again, this is a very unusual wound. No one has ever come in with a bird with a GSW. Dogs, yeah. The occasional cat. Sometimes even humans.” She gives a small laugh at that. “Not birds.”

“So what will you do?” Mandy asks.

“I’m going to splint and bandage up this wing,” the woman says, and does exactly so. “That’s really all I can do. Keep it dry, don’t let Ian move it around too much. It’s very likely he will never fly again. Are you two are prepared to take care of a semi-wild animal for a long time?”

Mandy nods.

The vet sighs again. “Y’know, strange as though it may sound, you guys are not my weirdest patients.” She picks up some gauze, soaks it in some clean liquid and starts wiping the blood off Ian. Only now does Mandy notice the gray and black feathers that edge the tips of his wings. Though she’s pretty sure that Ian’s human form ensures that his avian form is tougher than most, she wonders about the vet’s comment about flying. How would that physically affect Ian when he turns back?

“Done” says the vet, and Mandy sees that she has swaddled Ian in some clean cloth. His head peeks free off the cloth, and blinks lazily at Mandy.

“Thank you so much,” Mandy says, and only some of the effusiveness in her voice is faked. She gets a smile in return.

“If you can, report that dog fighting ring to the police. But first, take your brother to a clinic. And take care of yourself too.” Mandy’s given a knowing look. The vet probably thinks they’re animal rights activists or something, running around busting labs and dog fighting rings. “He might get rabies from the bite.”

She carefully places Ian in the cradle of Mandy’s arms, before stripping off her gloves. Walking back into the office, they find Mickey slumped in the chair, dozing. He flails awake and almost falls off when Mandy lightly taps his foot with hers.

“What the–Ian!”

“Doc says he’ll live,” Mandy tells him, and carefully places Ian into his arms. Once settled, Ian gives out a contented whistle. Mandy stares intently at a diagram about the feline intestinal tract while her brother pretends he’s not wiping his eyes on his shoulder.

“Um, how about payment?” Mandy asks.

“I’ll talk to Jan. You’ll just pay for the materials, gauze and such. I’ll also give you some antiseptic cream for the wound.”

The Milkoviches nod and troop out. Just before Mickey leaves, the vet gives him a look and says, “It gets better.”

“The fuck did you tell her?” Mickey hisses once the door has shut.

Mandy shrugs. “The truth. Kinda.” She looks down at Ian, who now appears to be sleeping. He looks unnaturally bright against the dark parka Mickey’s wearing. “He’ll be flightless for a while. Maybe forever.”

Mickey chews his lip. “We’ll hafta see when he turns back.”

* * *

Mickey and Ian’s apartment is interesting. There a sagging sofa that’s clearly been scavenged from the roadside taking up most of the tiny living room. A broken television screen lies propped up against a wall, waiting to be fixed and put to use. The kitchen has a tiny two-burner stove and a mini-fridge stuffed in a corner. She peeks into the tiny bedroom to find that it is mostly bed. A battered dresser stands next to the door of the en suite bathroom.

Mickey’s limping around the kitchen, setting up small bowls of water and food, which looks to be Chinese takeout. Then he carefully undoes the swaddling, allowing Ian to hop around the small kitchen table and eat.

“Look, Ian will be fine,” Mandy says, Ian cawing in agreement and pecking at Mickey’s nervous hands as they fuss over his bandages. “We have to take care of your shit now. What use will you be to him if you get infected? You probably have rabies already.”

Mickey looks down at his bruised and bitten arm. “Shit.”

“Yeah,” agrees Mandy, crossing her arms. “Know anywhere we could break in for rabies vaccinations?”

Shrugging, Mickey limps to his bedroom. It takes him two tries to get through the doorway, and when he does he almost falls flat on his face before managing to catch himself on the bed.

“See!” says Mandy, following him in with Ian perched on her shoulder. She hadn’t put him there. Ian had just climbed and pecked his way up her arm. “Jesus, Mickey, lie down before you accidentally kill yourself.”

For once, he actually does as he is told, flopping onto a pillow and pulling another over his face.

“I don’t supposed you have anything put on that?” she asks, gesturing at his wounds. Back home, when mom had still been alive, they’d had a plastic box full of band aids, disinfectant and superglue (and syringes) in the kitchen. She’s pretty sure she won’t find any of that here.

“Some Krazy glue in the kitchen,” Mickey’s voice comes muffled from under the pillow. “Ey, before you go, maybe you should clean up too.”

Right. Her face. She puts Ian down on the mattress and squeezes herself into the narrow bathroom. It’s pretty much nothing more than a wide corridor, a sink and a dirty tub squeezed next to each other with the toilet at the very end. She doesn’t bother finding a clean towel and wads up some toilet paper instead, dabbing at her face until she looks presentable. She’d forgotten to bring her makeup with her, and figures she might as well steal some while she’s out buying band aids and shit.

She walks back into the bedroom to find Mickey still sprawled on the bed, pillow still over his face. Ian has settled himself down on Mickey’s chest, head tucked under a wing in sleep.

Mandy snorts. “You guys are so cute I wanna puke.”

She gets a lazy middle finger in response.

“Okay, losers, don’t die while I’m out.”

“Whatever,” mumbles Mickey. He curls his hand around Ian, the harshness of the FUCK tattoo on his fingers betrayed by the gentle way he runs them over the Ian’s white feather.

Jesus, Mandy’s so not seeing this kind of tenderness from her brother. She leaves before she has to gag from the schmalziness of it all.

* * *

When she’s back an hour later, the apartment’s quiet. She grabs some Advil and a glass of water from the kitchen, wets some paper towels in the sink, and heads into the bedroom, where Mickey and Ian are still sleeping. In his sleep, Mickey has rolled onto his side, hugging the pillow he’d pulled over his face. Ian has migrated from Mickey’s stomach to the pillow and untucks his head when he hears Mandy come in. She dumps the plastic bag of supplies on the bed and he hops over to investigate, the movements wobbly due to his inability to balance himself with his wrapped wing.

“Sleep okay?” Mandy asks, running a finger over Ian’s head. He’s a lot softer than she’d expected.

“How about him?” she asks, nodding at her brother. Ian cocks his head, then pecks at the bag.

“Yeah, we’d better wake him.” Familiar with the way her brother wakes up, she nudges his foot with her own. “Hey.” She nudges harder. “Hey! Mickey!”

He jerks awake, leg kicking out. “What, what the fuck?”

She throws the paper towels at his face. "Clean up." Then she upends the bag, scattering basic first aid supplies all over the bed. “C’mon. Take your shirt off.”

“Shit, we should have done this earlier,” she mutters when Mickey peels off Ian’s hoodie and jeans to reveal the bite marks on his arm and thigh. The bites are inflamed and puffy-looking, seeping fluid. She dribbles some peroxide on the bite on his arm and he jerks away.

Mickey mops roughly at the blood smearing his arms and neck, before snatching some gauze and the bottle of peroxide. “Fuck off, I’ll do it myself.”

“Fucking grow up and accept some help every now and then,” Mandy snaps back. “If it weren’t for me you'd both be dog chow.”

Mickey falls silent at that, biting his lip. She dumps some on the bite on his thigh too, and they watch the peroxide foam and bubble around the wounds while Ian hops around the bedspread inspecting Mandy’s purchases. There’s a tube of antibiotic cream which he pecks at enthusiastically until Mandy snatches it away.

“Chill the fuck out, Ian. That’s next. And don’t think you’re not getting the same treatment when you’re human again.”

“You’re such a bossy-ass bitch,” Mickey complains, then yelps when she smacks his wound.

“Shut up,” she says. “Take your Advil and stop being a pussy.”

She gets an eye roll, but Mickey does as he’s told. It’s pretty amazing actually, and she’s not quite sure what to make of this new Mickey. The brother she knows would have complained more, been contrary just to fuck with her and wouldn’t have hesitated to throw her out of the room. Instead he’s letting her invade his personal space and reacts with a docility she’s never seen in him before.

She can’t help but remark upon it. “You’re nicer. Has Ian been training you-ow!” She rubs her arm where he’d pinched her hard.

“Shut the fuck up!” Mickey mutters. “It’s the dog thing. Some shit still sticks. I can smell better, hear better.”

“You listen better too?” Mandy teases after making sure she out of reach of his hands. “What if I tell you ‘stay’?”

Mickey throws a pillow at her.

“What about Ian?”

Mickey laughs. “Sometimes Ian forgets he has hands. Watch him eat. First time he smashed his face into lasagna. Fucking hilarious.”

Mandy has to laugh too at the mental image that provides. Next to them, Ian gives an indignant whistle, ruffling his tail feathers at them.

The peroxide has stopped foaming and she dabs carefully at the bite with some gauze, while Mickey takes care of the one on his thigh. They’ve stopped seeping, but still look worrying red. Grabbing the antibiotic cream, she dumps a healthy dollop onto the wound and passes the tube on to Mickey.

“Shouldn’t we seal them?” he asks.

“Unless you want your leg to rot,” she says. “Didn’t mom say never to close up bites? Shit’ll get infected.”

“Yeah, not like I ever played nurse with her like you did.”

Mandy puts some gauze over it and sticks it down with bandaids. “There,” she says, giving it a light smack. “If we’re lucky, you won’t end up a gimp.”

She gets a finger in response. Letting Mickey deal with the of his cuts and scratches, she lays back on the free corner of the bed. Now that everyone’s taken care of, exhaustion sets in. She doesn’t think she’s ever been this tired in her life. But she can’t go to sleep yet.

Folding her arms over her stomach, she turns to her brother. With the patchwork of band aids and gauze all over his arms and thighs, still sticky with blood in several places, he looks like a really weird modern Frankenstein. “What are you going to do about Terry?”

Mickey rubs his nose, doesn’t meet her eyes as he says, “Ian wants to kill him.”

Her breath catches in her throat and Mickey gives a little shrug and continues, “Says that usually the death of the creator will break the curse. That’s how it works in all the fairy tales and shit he reads.”

Elbowing up so that she can see her brother’s face better, Mandy asks, “You?”

Mickey rubs a hand over his face. “I don’t fucking know, Mands.”

She looks from her brother to Ian, who has settled down on the headboard and is watching them with the air of some king surveying his land. She reflects on the absurdity of her situation. Here she is, with her cursed brother and his equally cursed boyfriend, stuck in a situation out of a fucking book or movie. How is this her life? And what’s it like for them, stuck in this half-life, never able to be together at the same time as humans? She wonders what it’d be like if it was her and Lip. Then she wonders what kind of animal she’d be. Hopefully some kind of giant cat. Lip would be a lemur of course, with those giant eyes and dumb face.

“When did you find out?” she asks.

“After the wedding, I, we had to…” Mickey suddenly gets to his feet, walking to the dresser. First he pulls out a pair of sweatpants, jamming his feet angrily through the legs. They bunch over his ankles. Ian’s probably. The sweater he pulls out is the familiar high-necked one he always gets out when it gets cold. The second drawer he pulls open is piled high with loose sheet of scribbled paper, but he finally finds the pack of smokes he’s looking for. Tossing one to Mandy and lighting one up for himself, he leans against the dresser.

He smokes that one down to the filter and is halfway through another before he speaks again. “I couldn’t get it up. That night. Usually always been able to fake it but it didn’t work this time.” Mandy’s eyes widen in surprise at this unexpectedly intimate confession from her usually closed-off brother, but carefully refrains from saying anything. Mickey continues, “She...didn’t say anything. Actually made a bunch of fake noises and shit. I think we were both sure that there was someone outside the door, making sure we were actually fucking.”

“Jesus,” Mandy mutters. The more she hears, the more insane everything sounds.

She gets a grunt of agreement from Mickey. “Yeah. First moment I was alone I left. Went to see Ian. Guess he had a point. Why the fuck stay and feel like dying every day. Figured we could go to...I don’t fucking Florida or something. Seemed far enough away right? Ain’t like anyone here was going to miss me.”

“ _Me_ , fuckface.” She throws her extinguished filter at him.

“Right.”

Mandy can’t help but feel hurt at that. Yeah, so Mickey and her aren’t as tight as siblings as, say, the Gallaghers, but they’ve looked out for each other for years. So maybe they’ve drifted apart of late, each dealing with their own shit. Doesn’t mean she doesn’t fucking care.

Not noticing her turmoil, Mickey goes on. It’s like a dam has broken, the words keep tumbling out of him. She doesn’t think she’s ever heard him talk so much before, not about something that wasn’t a job or about guns and drugs and shit. “‘Course he couldn’t just say he was gonna run away with me, so he made up some ROTC shit. I was camped out at a motel. Figured we could steal a car and leave the next day. Too late though. Changed that night.”

From the headboard, Ian gives a warble. It startles Mandy, who has forgotten he is still there. But it reminds her of something she’d wanted to ask. “What’s it like, being a dog?”

Her brother stares at the glowing cherry of his third cigarette. “Weird.” He gives a half shrug. “It’s hard to explain. Of course there’s the color thing. Can’t see in color, that’s always super weird when I turn back. And every place has its own smell, and it’ll stick to you, so I can tell where you’re coming from.” He makes a face. “Can’t really understand human language too. I recognized you, but had no fucking clue what you and Ian talked about. We have to leave each other notes about what happened every day before we change.”

“What did Ian do?”

Mickey snorts. “Freaked the fuck out of course. Actually threw me out.” He flicks the ash of his cigarette. “Was a shit night. Next day the moment I changed, I went back to the motel. ‘Course by then he’d turned into a damn bird. Flew out the door the moment I opened it.”

Something turns in her stomach. Judging from the look on Mickey’s face, the memory is doing the same to him. “Thought I was never gonna see him again. Worried he’d change back in mid-air and fall. Jesus, it was worse than being a dog. At least as a dog...it’s harder to think like a human, to freak out about stupid human shit.”

Mandy almost laughs. “That stupid human shit are called _feelings_ , Mick.”

Her brother ignores her. “He came back again the next day, after I’d changed again. We missed each other the first few times until we figured out the sun stuff. Figured out what the hell was going on. Ian of course wanted to go after Terry right away, but I told him we had to be sure. Fuck knows what killing him would do?” He gestures between himself and Ian, who is grooming his beak over his good wing. “What if we end up stuck like this forever?”

Mandy stares up at the yellowed popcorn ceiling. “Y’know,” she says slowly, “Svetlana has been living in the house. She talked to me, after I saw you that night.” She remembers what the Russian had said about trying to help Mickey. Maybe she’d meant it. Maybe she could still do something now. “She said some stuff. Might be able to help us.”

Scowling since the first mention of his wife’s name, Mickey crosses his arms and adamantly shakes his head. “Don’t trust that bitch. How the fuck you know she’s not the one behind this?”

“What other choice do you have?”

“No,” Mickey says, and moves over to the bed to pick Ian up, as though the mention of the Milkovich homestead might be enough to hurt him. “We can’t go back to that place.”

Mandy rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I figured we could look for her at work.”

Another head shake from Mickey. “Terry found me at Ian’s club. He’s probably having us followed or something. What makes you think he won’t find out if we go sniffing around over there.”

“Jesus, Mick,” says Mandy, exasperated. She scrubs a hand through her hair. They have to find a way to put an end to this curse and Svetlana is their best bet for that. “Thought you’d been turned into a dog, not some pussy. You gonna roll over and give up like some bitch?”

Taunting has always been the best way to get to Mickey, and Mandy knows that as she deliberately tries to  provoke his anger. She ignores how his eyebrows rise and nostrils flare in response to the insults. She figures his hands would be curled into fist if they weren’t already curled around Ian.

“Maybe,” Mickey growls, “you’ve forgotten that I was almost killed today.”

“Yeah,” Mandy retorts, “you gonna live like that your whole life? Hiding from dad, like you’ve always done? You tried to be run away and be free, but here you are! Still stuck, still hiding! You’re such a coward!”

“How ‘bout you?” Mickey snarls back, leaving forward like–hah!–a dog straining against its leash. Warbling indignantly, Ian hops off Mickey’s lap and onto the bed. “You spent all of last year running after Lip Gallagher like some bitch and guess what, he threw you away anyway.”

Mandy feels her own hands curl into fists. “You shut the fuck up,” she snaps, jabbing a finger at her brother. “We’re not talking about me. This is about you and your damn pride. It won’t kill you to accept some help for once in your life, Mickey!” Somehow she finds herself on her feet, standing over her brother who looks up at her seemingly at loss for words. “But, no, you’d rather set yourself on fire than ask. Maybe you don’t give a shit about yourself, fine! But do it for Ian. Do it for me. _I_ want him back.Die a fucking dog if you want to, but don’t force my best friend to die as some goddamn bird.”

She dashes her arm across her eyes, where tears are now falling freely despite her best efforts to keep them in. “And don’t think you’re the only one afraid of Terry. You don’t know  _shit_.”

Before he can respond to any of that, she retreats to the bathroom and locks the door. Because that doesn’t feel like enough, she climbs into the tub too, pulling the shower curtain closed. Hidden like this, she finally lets the events of the past few days catch up. She thought that she’d grown out of crying herself to sleep, but clearly this is not a day for Milkoviches to be escaping their past. Tears and tiredness weigh her lashes down like leaden weights. Fuck Mickey, she thinks, then she’s gone.

 

* * *

 

Mandy wakes up in the tub, sore and cramped. Her face feels tacky from her tears and her mouth tastes like roadkill. Groaning, she pulls herself out of the tub and splashes some water on her face before venturing out. Mickey’s not in the bedroom, but she finds him seated at the kitchen table, scribbling furiously on a water warped legal sheet. Two fully covered pages already lie next to him, covered in his irregular handwriting. He has Ian perched on his shoulder, the bird peering down as though it is reading along to the word appearing on the page.

“You’re awake,” he grunts.

“Yeah,” Mandy says quietly. “What time is it?”

“Almost time.” Mickey jerks his head at the window, and Mandy sees the sun hanging low in the sky.

“Right,” she murmurs. “Hey, Mickey, ‘bout–”

“Gotta piss,” her brother interrupts her. He gets up and pushes past her, Ian hopping from his shoulder to hers in a rather acrobatic feat considering he only has use of one wing. Mickey actually pauses, staring with wide eyes and raised eyebrows at Ian on her shoulder. Mandy’s wondering if there’s some kind of silent communication going on between them despite Mickey’s insistence that the animal mind took over–maybe that’s just Mickey’s stupid brain–when he throws his hands up in the air. “Fine,” he mutters, and slams the door behind him.

Mandy walks over to the table, inspecting the sheets of paper he’d left behind. It’s hard to read his terrible handwriting, but she figures it’s the account of the day he’d told her about, left for Ian so that he can catch up on what happened. There are little doodles in the margins, most of them stick figures with guns, interacting with the lines of the page and the occasional smudge of ink from the shitty pen.

She turns one of the pages and finds herself look at the passable sketch of a gull’s head. “That you?” she asks Ian, and he warbles, brushing her face with his wing. The feathers, for all their sturdy, stiff appearances, are surprisingly soft.

The door to the bedroom slams open again and Mickey stomps out. “Nosy bitch,” he mutters, snatching the papers from her hands. He’d taken off his sweater and sweatpants, and cleaned up a bit more too, so he doesn't look like a murder victim. All the bandages and bandaids have been peeled off. They probably get messed up during the transformation. Like this she can see that the wound on his arm and thigh. They look better. Obviously still not healed, but no longer infected looking.

He catches her looking. “Yeah, the magic’s kinda fucked up,” he explains, carefully prodding at his arm. “Clothes don’t change with us. Also makes us tougher, somehow. Infection went away in an hour. Must be animal pheromones or some shit.”

Mandy doesn’t bother explaining that’s not how pheromones work. She follows Mickey into the bedroom, where clothes have been laid out on the bed for Ian.

Mickey sits down at the edge of the bed, staring at the floor. Mandy carefully removes Ian from his perch on her shoulder and places him on the bed. Her brother mumbles something.

“What?”

“I said you can go with Ian to see Svetlana,” Mickey repeats, voice raised louder than necessary. “Just...be careful, Mands. Don’t trust her, a’ight. Take the gun with you.”

“Yeah,” says Mandy. “We’ll be careful.”

The sunset is glinting through the window. Not sure about where to put herself, Mandy stands in the doorway of the room. She doesn’t take her eyes away from the bed. This time, she’s going to watch it happen.

It’s not clear how the curse knows when to go into effect: maybe there’s a certain angle of the sun. But suddenly the room fills with light, like the sunlight’s being magnified and reflected several mirrors. The shapes of her brother and the gull start to glow.

Mickey looks at her. “See ya, bitch.”

Mandy flips him off. “Dickbreath.”

The light gets intense enough that she’s forced to cover her eyes and peek through her fingers. Next time she’s getting sunglasses for this. She watches as Ian’s form blurs and grows, and Mickey’s form begins to shrink. There’s a moment where they’re both caught mid-transformation, humanoid enough to reach out at bring their foreheads together. Their mouths move, but she can’t hear what they’re saying. Then the room practically whites out, and she’s forced to close her eyes completely.

When she opens them again, Ian’s back to his familiar red-haired self. He doesn’t even bother with the clothes Mickey has laid out for him, just throws himself straight off the bed at the rather confused dog sat on the floor.

A dog, Mandy reflects, is the worst thing her brother could have been turned into. Whatever repressed, human-Mickey thoughts still remain in his dog brain, they are no match for the sheer amount of expression contain in his stubby tail. If it wags any harder at the sight of Ian, it’d probably fall off.

It takes a while for them to be sufficiently reunited, Ian taking the chance to look over each and every one of Mickey’s wounds. But he finally gets to his feet, and walks over to Mandy. There’s a hitch in each step, like he has to continuously remind himself to walk instead of hop.

“Mandy!” he cries, and she finds herself embraced by a very warm, naked Ian. Not for the first time, she feels a twinge of resentment at how very gay he is. Nevertheless, after the events of the night and the morning, it is very good to see, smell and touch him in his human form again.

They are interrupted by a short, sharp bark from Mickey. “Right,” Ian says cheerily. “Clothes.”

When his back is turned, Mandy sticks her tongue out at Mickey. Jealous idiot.

“Wait,” she says, when he’s about to pull on his shirt. “We gotta check your arm.”

“It’s fine,” says Ian dismissively. “Just a flesh wound.”

“We’re going to look at it anyway,” Mandy insists, and Mickey backs her up with growl.

Sighing, Ian sits down on the bed, taking Mickey with him, who immediately curls up into a ball and falls into a sort of doze. Mandy inspects the wound and pulls out the peroxide. He’s right, it’s nothing more than a graze, and the magic stuff Mickey had mentioned would probably ensure that it’ll heal right, but just to be safe, she should probably clean it again.

“I have a question,” she says as the peroxide foams away. “Mickey said you can’t understand each other as animals, but you’ve both been...communicating sometimes. Even with me.”

Ian nods thoughtfully. “It’s easier after we’ve just changed. It’s like the human part is still stronger. Then the animal instincts take over and it’s kind of like listening to a foreign language.”

“Right.” She not sure is that actually makes any sense, but it’s magic, she figures. “Anyways, Mickey left you his letter, but just to cut the long story short, we’re going to see Svetlana.”

Ian’s face immediately darkens at the name.

 


	6. from light to dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for this update taking so long. After realizing I wasn't able to meet my intended deadline, I kind of crashed hard. Also I'd been putting off a whole bunch of academic and work stuff, so that crashed too and that's what I've been caught up in so far. I'm determined to finish this, though it's going to be at a slower rate than the first five chapters.
> 
> This chapter is for the anon reader who messaged me on tumblr. ♥

It ends up taking quite a while to get Ian out of the house.

First, he wouldn’t leave without seeing to Mickey’s wounds again. Mickey, it turns out, doesn’t like being mothered over, whether he’s in dog or human form. Mandy takes the opportunity to take a shower, and when she comes out of the bathroom, Ian’s still on his stomach next to the bed, trying to cajole an irate Mickey out from under it.

“Ignore him and he’ll come out,” she tells him, but Ian continues to click his tongue, whistle and snap his fingers at the curled up figure under the bed.

“He’s just gonna bite you,” she warns, and goes into the kitchen to find something to eat. There’s nothing in the fridge except for some dried cheese slices, wrinkly tomatoes, a jug of expired milk and a fuckload of beer. Further investigation of the cupboards reveals cornflakes, ramen and a bag of cheetos. There is no bird seed, or dog food.

There’s a dented pot on the stove. Mandy picks it up and sniffs it, runs a finger across the bottom. It looks and smells relatively clean, so she fills it halfway up with water and sets it on the stove to boil. After some consideration, she grabs a wrinkled tomato from the fridge, hacks it up roughly, and dumps it into the pot with the contents of the packets.

Ian emerges from the bedroom, sniffing the air. “You cooked.”

“Yeah, for myself, asshat,” Mandy says, blocking the pot with her body, as Ian peers over her shoulder. “Get your own food.”

“That’s my food you’re eating,” Ian says mildly, but he crosses over to the cupboard and pours himself some cornflakes instead. Retrieving the milk, he sniffs it, grimaces and puts it back, before carrying the bowl of dry cereal to the table. “Hey Mick!” he yells at the direction of the bedroom.

There’s the clatter of claws, and Mickey’s now short and four-legged form comes shooting through the door. Mandy stops short, pot in hand, unsure whether or not to hold it up and away. Human-Mickey has a habit of stealing food; she’s not sure what dog-Mickey would do. “Hey Mick,” Ian calls again. He whistles, and as Mickey scrabbles around the table towards him, he picks up the bowl of Chinese that Mickey had set out for bird-Ian and puts it on the floor.

“I suppose being a dog is some use,” she observes dryly as she sits down with her ramen in the chair across of Ian. 

He grins slyly. “Watch this,” he says, and he takes a cornflake chip and with a whistle, flicks it in the air. A gray and white blur snatches it out of the air. Mickey whines a little upon landing, probably falling too heavily on his injured side, but just huffs and returns to his food.

Mandy isn’t sure whether to be impressed or just plain weirded out. “Y’know, he’s not going to be too pleased with you when you’re both back to human form, full time.”

Ian looks up from his cornflakes. “You really think Svetlana can help?”

Well, it’s not like they have any other choice. Right now it’s Svetlana, or they’ll have to find a way to get Terry and force him to change them back, and that sure as hell isn’t going to happen. She tells Ian as much, and he just makes a face over his cereal bowl.

“I don’t trust her,” he says.

“Well, neither do I,” snaps Mandy. “But do you have a better suggestion?”

He glares at her, giving her what Mandy’s heard Fiona call “the chin”. It reminds her little of Lip, and that condescending look he’d sometimes get in his eye. But Ian doesn’t say anything, doesn’t have any input of his own to give, so Mandy takes that as a win. She stirs around the leftover soup in her pot, pushing around bits of desiccated tomato. If she puts it on the floor, will Mickey eat it?

A crunch makes her look up to find Ian face down in his bowl. For a second she thinks he’s passed out and face-planted into his cornflakes, but he sits up immediately, looking incredibly annoyed as he wipes bits of cornflake off his face.

Mickey makes a strange ruffing noise. It takes a Mandy a moment before she realizes he’s laughing.

“Oh my god,” she says, watching Ian sullenly shovel the rest of the cornflakes into his mouth with his spoon, gripping it so tight his knuckles turn white. “Is that what Mickey said...when you forget you have hands.”

Ian’s lack of reply is answer enough. 

Mandy laughs. It bursts out of her, from somewhere deep inside her chest, like it’s been trying to get free for a while. Doubling over from the force of it, she wonders if she’s gone mad. Her ribs hurt, and it gets hard to breathe for a moment or two.

“Oh god, I’m sorry.” She wipes tears from her eyes. Ow. Now that she’s stopped, she gets to feel the sting of her bruises and cuts that had been stretched out as she’d laughed.

Ian huffs, but sketches a short bow over his cereal. “I live to entertain,” he says dryly. Her laughter nevertheless seems to have put him off his food, and he puts the bowl down on the floor, where the leftover cornflakes are immediately vacuumed up by Mickey.

Looking out the kitchen’s tiny window, Mandy’s reminded of the time. “We should go. We have to find Svetlana at the rub n’ tug before she goes back.”

Ian’s mouth sets into a mutinous line, but he gets up anyway, scraping his chair back in a way that sets Mandy’s teeth on edge and makes Mickey growl. “Right,” he says, “we’ll find that bitch. And then? She just gonna wave some fucking wand or shit and make everything better?”

“You don’t have a better idea, so shut the fuck up,” Mandy snaps, tired of his arguing. “It’s not my fucking ass on the line here. I told Mickey he should do it for you, but turns out he’s not the one being a selfish asshole.”

That seems to shut him up. He looks down at the dog, and maybe they do some of that ridiculous couple silent communication thing, because Ian pushes his chair back and the look on his face turns from obstinacy to a more determined kind of stubbornness. "Fine." He pushes his hair out of his face, but the drama of the moment is spoiled by a flake of cereal stuck to his cheek. Mandy decides not to point it out to him.

"Fine," apparently doesn't mean immediately. Mandy's got her coat and boots on, and the gun tucked into the waistband of her jeans (just in case), when Ian stops in the middle of the living room, beanie in one hand, coat hanging off his shoulder. "I don't think Mickey should come."

Mandy looks down at her brother, who has been waiting at the door with her for the past minutes while Ian zoomed around "getting ready". It's possible that his mind's already moved more into dog-mode than human; he doesn't react at all to Ian's words and starts vigorously scratching behind his ear.

"Well, okay," she says with a shrug. "Probably a good idea."

"But," Ian backtracks, running a hand through his hair and messing up the coif he'd spent fifteen minutes fixing, "what if Terry tracked us here? He found Mickey at the club."

Crossing her arms, Mandy rolls her eyes. "Well then bring him along."

"What if Svetlana double crosses us?"

"Jesus fuck!" Mandy exclaims. "Make up your goddamn mind, Ian. If we spend the next few hours arguing, you're both going to be screwed anyone. And look at him!" She gestures at Mickey, who has started licking his balls. Jesus, it'd been easier when Ian was a bird. "He's a dog, he doesn't give a shit. Leave him here, lock the door, whatever. If dad–" here her throat threatens to close up. She swallows and takes a breath. "If Terry really wants to kill him, seriously, what's gonna stop him.

You know us Milkoviches, we're like dogs with a bone. We don't let go." She laughs bitterly at her own joke.

Ian scowls. "I don't like it." But he spends the next five minutes making sure there's enough food and water in bowls on the floor, and that the bedroom door's open, and that there's newspaper laid down in the bathroom.

"Jesus," Mandy says, when he goes as far as to try prop chair up behind the door as a brace. "Do that and we'll never get it. Come on, it's late. We have to fucking go."

"Okay," Ian finally says, and locks the door behind him. Only for a whine from the behind the door to have him reaching for his keys again.

"No," Mandy says firmly, putting a hand over the keyhole. "No. He's a big boy, he can take care of himself."

"He's a dog!" Ian protests.

"Yes, I realize he's a dog, Ian." Ugh, at this point though it feels like Ian's being the dog, a very stubborn dog she keeps having to say "no" to. "You turn into a bird at night. My dad might be trying to kill us all. You do realize that I've been having the weirdest fucking day of my life. I'm trying to make it a little less weird."

Ian stares at the door like he's looking right through it. Mandy rolls her eyes. She doesn't have time for this romance drama bullshit. If it turns out Mickey's behind that door staring right back through it like this is some dumb teen movie, she's going to send them both to the pound. Or something. Throw them in the lake.

Walking ahead, down the dingy, smelly steps, she soon finds Ian clomping down after her. Something settles in her chest. It's good to know that he's coming after all. She doesn't want to face Svetlana alone again, especially not if Terry might be nearby. Besides, it's nice to have Ian to herself again, especially now that she's been clued into what's going. Like, fuck Mickey, really. Ian was her boyfriend first, and if anything, she'd missed his solid, comforting presence over the past few months. It still hurt that they hadn't even thought to give her a heads up before leaving, or hadn't thought about asking her for help. Hell, they hadn't even told her they'd been banging, and it's not like they both didn't know that she wouldn't have cared about the whole being gay stuff. Fuck, maybe if she'd known, they won't be in this shit in the first place.

Turns out she's more than a little annoyed at that, and she punches Ian in the shoulder.

"Ow," he says, the big baby. "What the hell?"

"I thought I was your best friend."

"You are," he insists, sounding confused.

She kicks at an empty can, bouncing it off the curb and onto the road. "You could have told me."

"I, Mick–"

"Fine," she says, pulling out a cigarette. "You guys didn't want to tell me about the fact that you're screwing. 'Kay. Whatever. Woulda been weird anyway."

"But this," she lights it and takes a long drag, then passes the box to Ian, "this–you guys were gonna leave. Without me."

"Look," says Ian. "I didn't plan–Mickey was the one who, he showed up. We were in a rush, I didn't think–"

"Yeah," chokes Mandy, and to her horror, tears start spilling down her cheeks. She angrily brushes them away and sucks desperately on her cigarette, like she could suck the tears back in too. The smoke makes her lungs burn and her eyes water. Yeah, she can blame it on the smoke.

Ian is looking at her, guilt written all over his face. His cigarette smolders in his fingers.

Mandy coughs, clears her throat. "I have as much of a reason to want to leave. You knew. You know."

Raising what left of his smoking stub to his lips, Ian takes a deep pull from his cigarette and lets it fall. With the smoke curling past his lips, and his red hair catching yellow glow of the streetlights, there's something gloomily otherworldly about him.

"Sorry, Mands," he mumbles.

Mandy just thinks about the boy she'd known. Jesus, it feels like years ago, Ian tripping up that pervert, her chasing him down after, their fake relationship. He'd been the first boy who'd liked her for more than her body (or more like her body just didn't even register to him). The first friend she'd actually felt she could confide in. And somehow over time, he'd become a stranger to her. They'd still been good before he'd left, but between her getting involved with Lip, and what were probably his issues with Mickey, the cracks had started to grow.

"Hey," says Ian, and she starts when he puts his arm around her. "I'm sorry."

She lets herself lean into him, making sure she's not leaning against his bad arm. "Just...please don't leave without telling me."

It's not a promise either one of them can make, but it still makes her feel better to hear him say yes.

Despite having grown up in a family involved in various kinds of crime, Mandy isn't quite sure what time brothels actually close. It makes sense that they'd run past usual opening hours, since that's when clients would probably come in. So she and Ian end up huddled in the basement entrance of closed store across the street, hoping that people walking past them will just think them hobos and ignore them. It's cold, colder than she'd expected, and Ian's restless. This means his dumb red head is constantly bobbing up over the pavement, trying to keep an eye on the entrance of Sasha's "massage parlor" and Mandy constantly has to tug him back down.

"Chill the fuck out," she hisses, pulling him back for what feels like the hundredth time. He's taken off his beanie, claiming it makes his head too hot. "What the fuck is wrong with you anyway? You're like, wired. Constantly."

Ian shrugs, turning away to pace in the tiny stairwell. Mandy perches herself a few steps above him, making room for him and also not wanting to get her feet stepped on. "Don't know," he says. "Just feel..." He shrugs again.

"Just want to be done with all of this."

Mandy knows how he feels. Hell, she'd been the one suggesting this anyway, just so that be done with all this weird magic crap. Break the spell without killing Terry and going to jail. Cos that's gonna be so easy. And then get the fuck outta Southside. Somewhere warm. Miami, maybe.

"Where is she?" Ian hisses, once again peering at the parlor. It's dark, the sun long gone down. Anxiety gnaws at Mandy's stomach like a rat. What if Ian's right and Svetlana has betrayed them? What if it's just dumb luck, and they'd missed her? Or what if Terry'd found out? She gnaws at her thumbnail and wonders, wishing her mind would stop chasing itself in circles, wishing Ian would just chill the fuck out and shut up.

The hard  _ clack-clack _ of high heels approaching makes her sit up. She pulls Ian down by his sleeve, forcing back into the corner where the glow of the streetlights doesn't quite touch them. Sucking in her breath as the footstep draw nearer, she hears Ian do the same. His hands curl around her shoulders and she can feel him tense–

"You coming, or you two still hiding like pussies?"

Mandy breathes out in a rush. Svetlana. Behind her however, Ian tenses even further.

"How did you find us?" she asks, carefully looking around as she ventures up the stairs.

Svetlana smirks. "Little birdie told me." She starts to walk down the street, not waiting for either Mandy or Ian. Mandy glances over to him. There's a mutinous look on his face, and she can see that his hands are balled into fists in the pocket of his coat, but he goes along anyway.

The Russian leads them down the road, trotting confidently along in her heels despite the ice on the pavement and the weight of her pregnant belly. She turns sideways into a dark alley, and Mandy and Ian exchange another look. Mandy weighs the possibility of Svetlana leading them into a trap, but then figures that after yesterday, killing them in some alley wouldn't quite be her father's style. He'd want to make a show of it, at least of Ian. Her, the traitorous daughter, he'll probably strangle her to death quietly. The quiet choked laughter that slips past her lips at the morbid thought sounds loud in the quiet alley. She bites her lip, willing her mind and mouth to shut the fuck up.

Ian doesn't seem to have that compunction though. "Where are we going?" he hisses, making sure he's loud enough for Svetlana to hear. "Where are you taking us?"

"Patience, orange boy," Svetlana hisses back. Then she takes a sudden turn into the shadows of a rickety fire escape and seemingly disappears.

"Fuck!" Mandy echoes Ian's sentiment, though a little more quietly, aware of their surroundings. Suddenly she regrets not taking Ian's fears more seriously. This is an excellent place for an ambush. Hell, kill them and leave them here and no one'll find their bodies amidst all the trash.

Ian paces around, glaring at every shadow and every tiny nook and any small space behind and between and under the piles of scrap and trash and rotting wood piled against the walls of the alley. Glancing nervously around as Ian nudges a pile of rusted corrugated iron with his boot and makes the cracked, disintegrating sheets rattle loudly, Mandy's about to suggest they leave, and quickly, when Svetlana steps forward out of nowhere.

"You make too much noise," she says.

"Fuck you!" snarls Ian, looking like he's only seconds away from losing it. "What kind of game are you playing?"

Svetlana rolls her eyes. "We do not want to be seen or heard, yes? Come here. This a private place."

Mandy crosses her arms. "Why should we trust you?"

She hadn't thought it was possible for Svetlana to look more condescending, but somehow she manages a snide curl of her mouth that even Lip would be proud of. "Of course you shouldn't trust me. You learn nothing growing up here? And I thought you were the smartest one in your family."

A hot flush spreads up Mandy's face. The accusation of naivete burns; whatever kind of foolish innocence she used to have had been taken from her long ago. If anything, Ian's the optimistic, trusting one. Svetlana's implication, after a listening to Ian's reservations about meeting her all evening,

"Fuck you!" she snaps, and this time she's the one taking a threatening step forward. "You get off on this or something, you sick bitch? What the hell do you want, huh? You are the one who told me you know what's going on. If you've got nothing to say, why not keep your fat mouth shut."

Another step and the weight of the gun presses into her hip. She imagines drawing the weapon, shooting the Russian right in her smug face. Maybe finally,  _ finally _ , she'd get some kind of emotional satisfaction from this shit show, after suffering through dramatic revelation after dramatic revelation, none of which actually directly concern her.

Something of that sudden red-hot anger probably shows in her face, because Svetlana takes a wobbly step back on her stripper heels and vanishes again. Ian yells, but Mandy takes another step forward, and another, until she steps onto something soft and yielding.

A body. The thought shoots through her head and her stomach rolls. She forces herself to look down.

It's just a mattress. Mildewed, browning, suspicious stains everywhere. It smells like a body, like blood and shit and worse. Dark liquid oozes up around the sharp points of Svetlana's heels were they dig into the soaked surface, and under Mandy's own worn sneakers.

Her eyes track up Svetlana's legs, wrapped in pantyhose that look far too thin for the weather, up to her face. The Russian stares back at her defiantly, almost challengingly. A cigarette smolders between her fingers. Watching the smoke curl away from her hand, Mandy notices the bruises around her wrist. And it's too dark to see, and collar of Svetlana's puffy jacket is pulled too high, but she's pretty sure there are bruises around her neck too.

"We both have the same goal." Svetlana's voice is toneless as she looks up, exhaling a cloud of smoke into the cold night sky. "But I am number one." She gestures at her pregnant stomach. "Even before the child."

Mandy nods.

Just then, the mattress dips and squelches next to her as Ian stumbles forward and almost faceplants onto its filthy surface.

"Mandy!" he exclaims, catching himself on her shoulder. His voice turns hostile as he turns to Svetlana. "You."

"It's okay," Mandy tells him. "We...have come to an understanding."

"Right," Ian says skeptically, but he stuffs his fists back into the pockets of his parka. This time, he looks ready to listen.

"What's with the disappearing shit?"

Looking bored but also somewhat tired, Svetlana rolls her eyes and flicks away the glowing stub of her cigarette. It sizzles out the moment it hits the soggy mattress. "Three weeks ago, client stabbed a girl. She lives, but mattress is ruined, thrown out. But why waste good blood, yes? Is powerful. I know it is disgusting, you think I cannot smell the piss and the shit? But stand here and we will not be heard or seen."

“Jesus,” Mandy says, making a face and trying not to look down again. She can’t help it. She does. Her weight on the soaked mattress has left small puddles gathering around the soles of her sneakers. 

“That is creepy as hell,” Ian mutters. “And disgusting,” he adds, apparently unable to look away too.

"What you Americans say?" Svetlana muses. "Want not, waste not?"

"Waste not, want not," Ian mumbles. "And you're not really using that right."

Svetlana rolls her eyes and Mandy can't help but snort. What a nerd.

But Svetlana cuts short the unexpected segue to humor. "Business," she says, snapping her fingers in Ian's face. "You need solution to our problem. I help you restore you and your idiot boyfriend's form. You help me make Terry Milkovich go away."

"You gonna kill him?" Ian asks, eyebrow arched. Mandy bites her lip, deciding she's going to keep quiet on this one. Despite everything that he's done to her, and probably will if they fuck this up, she's still not sure if she can bear to see Terry dead. Besides, dead Terry likely means that at least one of them might end up in prison. That's something she wants to avoid.

The Russian herself looks skeptical, though that probably has more to do with her doubt at Ian's ability to get the job done than at any concern about the consequences this may have on him. "I just need him to go away," she says.

Ian's eyes narrow suspiciously. "Why?" he asks. "What has he done to you?"

"None of your business," Svetlana snaps. "And you want to know how to stop this or not?"

"Just shut up and listen to her, Ian." The redhead glares at her but doesn't offer up any more smart remarks.

"So this curse," Svetlana begins, "it revolves around the sun, yes?"

Seemingly unable to help himself, Ian opens his mouth but Mandy quickly speaks over him. "Yes. When the sun sets, Ian turns from a bird into a human, and Mickey turns into a dog. Vice versa when it rises."

Svetlana nods thoughtfully. She takes out another cigarette and lights it. Mandy starts to tap her foot impatiently but stops when it mattress starts to squelch. Ian runs a hand through his hair, and shoots Mandy a glare before he asks, "So what's the solution?"

"Patience, Carrot Boy," Svetlana says, blowing a smoke ring into his face. "This is why you are always in trouble. Boys. Cannot keep their dicks in their pants or their sense in their heads."

"Oh my fucking god," Mandy exclaims. "Will you two just fucking stop."

She points to Ian. "Unless you never want to bang my brother again, shut up."

"And you," she turns to Svetlana. "Get to the point. Or I'm sure my father will be very interested in the fact that his favorite hooker is trying to disappear him."

Svetlana doesn't look as terrified as Mandy'd hoped at the threat, but she does get a rather pinched look on her face. One final inhale, and the butt of her second cigarette goes to drown in the mattress.

"If it is based around the sun, then it must end with it."

"What?"

"You need to wait until the eclipse."

"Eclipse?" Ian exchanges a look with Mandy. She shrugs.

"Yes, Carrot Boy," Svetlana says. She pulls her coat tighter around her. Must be getting cold, standing around in a dank alley in a miniskirt. Mandy's own toes are beginning to feel like ice cubes. "Eclipse. Moon pass over sun. From light to dark. Day becomes night."

Distracted from her toes, Mandy looks to Ian. Yeah, eclipses. It sounds familiar, it's like she'd heard about one recently. "Darkness...during the day. Jesus, Ian, this might just work."

A grin starts to spread across Ian's face until Svetlana holds up one finger. "One catch," she says, and draws out a dramatic pause until Mandy's tempted to push her over into the filthy mattress. "It must happen in front of Terry."

"What?" Ian's angry exclamation echoes round the empty alley. Mandy winces, but can't suppress a shout of her own.

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

"He has to be there," Svetlana intones gravely, like she's some kind of slutty Russian Yoda. "Then only what he has done becomes undone."

Taking a step back and another and another until she finds herself fetched up against the damp dirty wall, Mandy watches her breath paint the air before her white. She thinks of Terry, just the night before, facing her down at the dog fights. That look on his face before she'd pulled the trigger. Before that, she'd probably would have gotten away with her defiance, her search for Mickey and Ian, her involvement. She's always been his princess. His. Fuck. His hands–her mind revolts at the memory, quickly followed by her stomach. The taste of vomit and its acrid smell provide a welcome distraction. She focuses on the pale puddle she'd left right before her sneakers. Holds onto the wall to keep herself from flinching when Ian's hands carefully curl around her shoulders.

"Mandy." His voice is quiet, concerned.

She heaves again, but nothing comes up. Bile stings the back of her throat. When she speaks, her voice is hoarse. "I can't do this."

"You don't have to be there, Mands," says Ian. "Just Mickey and me."

She shakes her head. "You don't betray the Milkoviches without consequences. You don't betray family."

Ian pulls her back against his chest, arms going around her waist. He moves carefully, like he's not quite sure the intimacy is welcome. But Mandy leans back into it. She has missed being held. It feels nice. "Mandy," he says, "he betrayed you first."

Like she doesn't know that. Terry's a piece of shit who probably deserves to suffer for all the shit he's done to his own family, but when it comes down to it, he's her dad. They're Milkoviches. Family's family.

"Would you kill Frank for all the shit he's done?" she asks.

"No," says Ian immediately. "But Frank's–"

"This is touching," Svetlana's voice cuts in. "But I thought Carrot Boy was rubbing dicks with your brother."

Sometimes Mandy really wants to strangle that bitch. "Oh my god, don't you ever shut up?"

"No," Svetlana says cheerily. Any of her previous tiredness seems to have evaporated, like she's drawing power from Mandy's misery or something. "I also think you idiots should know that eclipse is in three days."

"Three–three days!" A fist strikes the wall next to Mandy and she flinches. Ian gives her an apologetic look before he rounds on Svetlana. "That's...How are we going to get ready in three days?"

"Not my problem," Svetlana says, throwing her hands up in the air. "From now on, your job to figure it out. And now I have to go." She pulls the hood of her puffy jacket snug. "Before Terry finds out, and we all become dead meat."

And with that cheery parting reminder, she walks out of the alley. Mandy gives her retreating back the finger, torn between relief at the woman's absence, but also anxiety at what might be waiting back for her at the Milkovich house. She's sure Svetlana could take care of herself, but she also knows her father. But it's out of her hands now. Svetlana has given them the key to their solution. Now Ian, Mickey and her just need to find a way.

"So...," she looks up at Ian. "We have three days to figure out a way to be in the same room with my father. Without anyone getting killed the moment you see each other."

A deep furrow has dug its way onto Ian's forehead and he gnaws on a thumbnail as he thinks. "We could just sneak into the Alibi."

Mandy snorts. It's the first thing she'd thought of too. "My father's not really a regular there."

"We could get Kevin to have some kind of event," Ian insists. "Eclipse viewing day!"

"Yeah," says Mandy, rolling her eyes. "Because something like that will totally get Terry in a bar."

"Free booze."

Mandy holds up a hand. "Ian, just–just stop. We're just talking 'round in circles. So we're gonna get Terry to the Alibi. This means telling Kevin. You know he's going to blab to Vee, who'll tell Fiona. You ready to let your family know?"

Ian's brow-furrow gets deeper.

She barrels on. "Then there's the fact that Terry's probably gonna be hanging with people like my uncle and brothers. Iggy–Iggy's all right, I guess, but everyone else? They were probably there at the dog fight. You want to change back and take them on right away? Without this weird fast-healing shit you've got going as animals?"

"Arggh," groans Ian, pressing clenched fists to his forehead. "Why is this shit so complicated?"

"It could be worse," says Mandy dryly. "I was expecting some kind of blood sacrifice at midnight. With naked dancing involved."

Despite himself, Ian barks out a laugh. "I'm pretty sure if Mickey had to choose between staying a dog and naked dancing, he'd chose being a dog."

She starts down the alley, carefully picking her way back out over the heaps of trash and junk. Ian's heavy footsteps rush up behind her, and she senses his presence against her back before his arm carefully comes down over her shoulder. She leans into him, the imbalance of weight turning their gait into a sluggish shuffle.

"Thank you," says Ian. She feels him press his lips to her hair. "For...doing all of this. For helping."

"Yeah," she mutter," No big deal."

"Nah, it is."

Mandy bites her lip, tilts her head up at the sky. The might is grey with clouds and smog. There are no stars.

"Seven more hours," she hears Ian mutter.

"You can tell?"

"A little," he says. "It's a vague sense."

She nudges him in the side. "We'll figure something out."

They break apart as they exit the alley, suddenly aware that they're back in what could be Terry's territory. The lights of the massage parlor are still glowing. Maybe Svetlana's in there, instead of back at the Milkovich house. Mandy walks past with her head ducked, hoodie pulled up over her head. Ian has pulled his beanie back on. They walk quickly until they turn into the next street, then keep up the pace. They have a ways to go anyway, having by unspoken agreement decided it'd be best to board the L the next station over. There's too much of a possibility that they'd run into a Gallagher at their usual stop.

After a while, Mandy finds herself getting a little out of breath and they slow down. Ian stuffs his hands in his pockets and nudges her back gently with his elbow. "Hey, Mands?"

"Mmm?" She contemplates smoking. It won't help her breathlessness (hell, that's probably due to all her smoking), but she's craving a cigarette right now.

"It's not just about Mickey and me," says Ian. He looks down at her, head ducked slightly to the side and in sudden sidesweep of passing car he looks terribly young. It's a stupid observation because they're the same age, but Mandy just feels old. Really fucking old. "It's about you too. All of us."

"You're such a sentimental pussy, Gallagher," she mumbles past her cigarette. Out of gas, her lighter fails to catch and she throws it onto the road.

"And you're repressed," he teases, "but that's okay." Before she can react he's grabbed her and thrown her over his shoulder. She shrieks, dropping her cigarette, and smacks his ass to make him put her down.

"Fuck, Ian!" she yells.

"Nah," he pipes up, tone cheerful over the sound her annoyed grumblings as his shoulder digs into her stomach. "I'm taking you with me. Wherever I go. All you Milkoviches with an 'M', you're stuck with me."

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes about the animal choices for Ian and Mickey.
> 
> Mickey as a pit bull: Admittedly somewhat cliche seeing that every other fanfic describes him as such, whether in relation to Ian or not. Then again, it fits him so well, there's a reason it's used to much! Loyal, misunderstood, bred/raised for aggression but capable of being a giant softie inside; it's a no brainer. I'm a cat person generally, but I ended up reading a whole bunch of stuff about dogs while writing this, and yeah, dogs are great.
> 
> Ian as a seagull: This was a bit harder. At first I was going to go with the cat-dog parallel but Ian totally doesn't strike me as a cat. He didn't strike me as a dog either. I went with a seagull at the end because I did want to keep the bird-aspect of Ladyhawke, and being a creature capable of flight did fit Ian (as a character who's constantly trying to escape). Also seagulls are really chatty, smart, frequently return to the same colony (the Gallaghers) and are incredibly monogamous animals (cough). [Also one of the first discoveries of homosexuality in animals was in seagulls (a mated female pair though).](https://qz.com/1023638/the-gulls-are-alright-how-a-lesbian-seagull-discovery-shook-up-1970s-conservatives/) So yeah, seagulls are awesome. And they're also assholes. So Ian to a T.

**Author's Note:**

> I tumbl [here](https://engmaresh.tumblr.com/), where I generally just lurk and reblog.
> 
> Kudos and reviews are hugely appreciated. Thank you for reading!


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